Small War in Mexico: 2002-2015 (closed)

[jmm99]

welcome to the shop - we'll expect a full report on Mexico this fall then. For the life of me, I can't see why anyone would not spend spring, summer and fall (all three months of them) in the Copper Country; but to each their own.

And I'm still here & working - you wussy.

Regards,

Mike

[Hunter Watson]

Hunter,

------------------------

Still hard decisions appear to elude politicians and the public in this sphere. Especially when labelled as a "war", rather than a health problem for example.

davidbfpo

------------------------

Thanks David,

Finding a solution is made difficult by taboos inhibiting public discussion of reform. The character and intentions of the messenger are attacked as a distraction from the public policy issues he raises. He tends to be labeled. In many ways it is similar to barriers erected to revising our Middle Eastern policy, in particular the *nature* of our relationship with Israel. In both cases the unintended consequences of the original policies have been devastating yet it remains terribly difficult to address reforms in public. In the first case the reformer is likely to be labeled a drug user with a personal agenda and in the latter, an anti-Semite. In both cases the labeling is designed to prevent reform.

Hunter

[slapout9]

Senator Barney Frank D(Mass.) has a bill pending that would completely decriminalize Marijuana.

[slapout9]

Link to one of the best reports I have seen. A lot of policy makers want like this but there is some important stuff in here.

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?o...3+02%3A44%3A05

[Bill Moore]

Slap,

Thanks, excellent video, very informative. Interesting theory (at least the way I interpreted it) that the North America Trade Agreement undermined the traditional requirement, putting thousands out of work, now they're working for the cartels.

I wonder if this is a prelude to what we're facing in the U.S. with globalism putting thousands out of work, will our society now be more vulnerable to criminal insurgencies? GM can't compete with Toyota, thousands unemployed, but the black economy needs employees.

Bill

[slapout9]

Bill, I don't think Mexico will become a failed state like we usually mean. I think there is a strong chance it will become a "Kleptocracy" (state controlled by criminals) and if the US is not careful it will be to.

[Jedburgh]

...Four times as many weapons --much of it military grade--enters Mexico from other areas. So if we are going to highlight the weapons issue, we need to see where most are coming from....

Miami Herald, 4 Jun 09: Mexico drug cartel's grenades from Guatemalan army

....Prosecutor Leonel Ruiz said investigators have determined that more than 3,800 bullets and 563 grenades seized outside Guatemala's capital in April following a shootout that left five anti-drug agents dead came from military bases in the Central American nation, which has become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine.

"They were taken from military bases but that doesn't necessarily mean the drug traffickers stole the weapons because it could be that they bought them from a third party," Ruiz said.

Ruiz said investigators identified the Guatemalan army's emblem on the grenades and munitions.

In the April weapons seizure, police also found eight anti-personnel mines, 11 M60 machine guns, bullet proof vests and two armored cars that investigators say belong to the Zetas, a group of assassins for Mexico's Gulf drug cartel.....

[Jedburgh]

Miami Herald, 11 Jun 09: Mexican state bans cops from carrying cell phones

First local police in Monterrey lost their assault rifles after an armed confrontation with federal agents while protesting the arrest of cops for alleged gang ties. Now officers in Mexico's third-largest city will be stripped of cell phones.

The legislature in Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is located, unanimously approved a bill banning city and state police from carrying personal cell phones while on duty in an effort to prevent corrupt officers from communicating with drug gangs.....

[Jedburgh]

GAO, 19 Jun 09: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges

In recent years, violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated dramatically, due largely to the Mexican government’s efforts to disrupt Mexican DTOs. U.S. officials note the violence associated with Mexican DTOs poses a serious challenge for U.S. law enforcement, threatening citizens on both sides of the border, and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials generally agree many of the firearms used to perpetrate crimes in Mexico are illicitly trafficked from the U.S. across the Southwest border. GAO was asked to examine:

1. Data on the types, sources, and users of these firearms;
2. Key challenges confronting U.S. government efforts to combat illicit sales of firearms in the U.S. and stem the flow of them into Mexico;
3. Challenges faced by U.S. agencies collaborating with Mexican authorities to combat the problem of illicit arms; and
4. The U.S. government’s strategy for addressing the issue.

[bourbon]

Charles Bowden is the preeminent scribe of the southern front in the ‘war on drugs’; his book Down by the River is to the drug war what Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest is to the war in Vietnam. Two of his recent articles examine the lives of men, one wittingly engaged in, and another unwillingly trapped in the recent narco-violence in Mexico. Bowden uses these men’s stories to reveal a deeper picture of what is currently going on at the border.

The sicario: A Juárez hit man speaks, by Charles Bowden. Harper's, May 2009.

"We Bring Fear"- A reporter flees the biggest cartel of all—the Mexican Army, by Charles Bowden. Mother Jones, July/August 2009.

"Mexicans," he explains, "know the Army is a bunch of brutes. But what is going on now is a coup d'etat by the Army. The president is illegitimate. The Army has installed itself. They have become the government. They are installed in all the state governments. They control the municipal police. They are everywhere but the ministry of education—after all, they are too illiterate to run that. The president has his hands tied and he has tied them."

But there is another way of looking at the facts on that ground that is un-Mexican with its fetish of a pyramid of power going back to the Aztec emperors, and un-American with our conviction that every place is kind of like our nation only with unsafe water and spicy food. Maybe, the center no longer holds. In the last 10 years, since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juárez cartel and first among equals in the drug world, the industry has fragmented into independent baronies and smaller outlaw bands. Since the collapse of the PRI, the ruling party that lasted more than 70 years, Mexico's civil society has also fragmented, with power leaving the capital and recombining with the narcogangs. The Army, the largest gang, is not attempting to seize the bankrupt and withering state, but grabbing market share in a place whose two largest industries are supplying American drug habits and exporting millions of people. Cartels once imposed constraint of trade. But like soda-pop CEOs, the generals now angle to increase their share of the skyrocketing domestic drug market. And of course, the United States finances this move, via the Mérida Initiative, in the delusion that it is shoring up a republic south of the Rio Grande. We are staring into the future but using old prescription glasses. Murderous cholos on the corner in Juárez and troops marauding and robbing in the disguise of a Mexican drug war may be writing the future while President Obama and President Calderón wander in their bunkers of power, and cling to the fantasies of the ancien régime.

[bourbon]

Mexican officials defend drug war strategy as deaths rise, by Alfredo Corchado. The Dallas Morning News, August 2, 2009.

Although Gómez Mont did not elaborate on his comments, other Mexican and U.S. officials said the Calderón administration may begin withdrawing troops from Juárez and other trouble spots this fall, provided the situation has stabilized. The troops would be replaced by newly trained and better-paid police officers.

One senior Mexican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the military does not have the training or intelligence capabilities to effectively take on the cartels.

"The truth is we miscalculated," the official said. "The corruption is deeper than we ever imagined, and our human intelligence is weak."

[bourbon]

U.S. Firms Probed in Mexico Oil Scam, BY SUSAN DAKER, ANA CAMPOY AND JOEL MILLMAN. The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2009.

SAN ANTONIO -- The U.S. government is investigating whether several U.S. companies took part in a cross-border scheme to siphon oil products from Mexico's state oil company and smuggle them across the border.

The probe is part of a broader two-year joint U.S.-Mexican investigation into a network of Mexican oil smugglers supported by the Gulf drug cartel, one of Mexico's most powerful and brutal criminal organizations.

Oil theft has been common on both sides of the border for decades. But the breadth of the smuggling operation, extending from Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico's state oil company, to U.S. companies, is a troubling sign of the growing reach of cross-border organized crime, as well as the efforts by Mexican drug cartels to diversify their business.

[bourbon]

Feds: Cartel turns to radio waves to avoid police detection, by Jennifer L. Berghom. The Monitor (McAllen, TX), August 24, 2009.

The Gulf Cartel and the Zetas have established a sophisticated radio communications network that stretches hundreds of miles and has stymied recent law enforcement advances in monitoring cellular phones, according to court documents obtained Monday.

U.S. federal investigators believe the groups — who refer to themselves collectively as “The Company” — now rely on a daisy chain of linked local radio frequencies stretching from Guatemala to the Tamaulipas border to monitor movement of their drug loads and cash payments.

The system — as described in federal court filings in a case against its architect — allows cartel members to keep in constant communication over an ever-shifting series of public bandwidths while making it extremely difficult for authorities to listen in, the documents state.

[Arjan]

Just found this paper at the AWC. Haven't finished it but so far pretty. Warns that we are not paying enough attention to friends South of the Border.

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usacsl/...yAlexander.pdf

For future reference: the link has changed.

[CloseDanger]

The soft turn right on our border:

http://professionalsoldiers.com/foru...t=mexico+islam


Original:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/is...-state-chiapas

And Hezbollah in Venezuela.

[bourbon]

Outsmarted by Sinaloa: Why the biggest drug gang has been least hit. The Economist, Jan 7th 2010.

The Sinaloa organisation (named after a north-western state) is responsible for around 45% of the drug trade in Mexico, reckons Edgardo Buscaglia, a lawyer and economist at ITAM, a Mexico City university. But using statistics from the security forces, he calculates that only 941 of the 53,174 people arrested for organised crime in the past six years were associated with Sinaloa.

...“The government’s strategy is to focus on the weakest groups, so that the organised crime market will consolidate itself around Sinaloa,” says Mr Buscaglia. “They’re hoping to negotiate a decrease in violence with that one group.”

Insidious rise of Gulf Cartel, by Dane Schiller. Houston Chronicle, Jan. 4, 2010.

Interviews, files and court records trace a syndicate's growth from small-time pot smuggling to a mega-empire with a hub in Houston

[bourbon]

Kidnapping expert's family remains in limbo: His work for a Houston firm sent him to Mexico in ’08, and he hasn’t been seen since, by Dudley Althaus. Houston Chronicle, Jan. 25, 2010.

Batista's family and colleagues have received no ransom demands, no proof of life, nothing at all from his abductors.

[AdamG]

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...eets_of_laredo

Local TV news in Texas reported that the Zetas have left Reynosa tonight. They've moved about 150 miles west to Nuevo Laredo. Sources reported the Zetas want to take over the city and make it their base of operations. The U.S. Consulate General's office already has confirmed a gun battle in Nuevo Laredo. ... According to the TV news cast the Zetas are already calling in reinforcements. Some 700 Zetas from around Mexico are joining the 500 already brought to the area last week. The Gulf Cartel also called in reinforcements last week and reportedly joined forces with La Familia Michoacana (LFM) and the Sinaloa Cartel."

Today's interesting twist : while the drug gangs continue their effort to blind the world on their activities (see http://cpj.org/blog/2010/03/eight-jo...-in-mexico.php and http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...2.4b84845.html ), the locals are trying to get the word out with Twitter ( http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/....social.media/ )

[Jedburgh]

CIFP, 8 Mar 10: Mexico: A Risk Assessment Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

So far from God, so close to the United States; Mexico can be described as a nation of paradox. Being a relatively new democracy, Mexican politics and social development have progressed rapidly over the past several decades. Yet stable development and macro policy has not halted the downward trends and elevated risk factors in other areas of analysis. The controversial election of President Calderon by less than 1% in 2006 was a test of the fragile democratic process that had been opened to opposition parties in 1989. With his narrowly successful win of the presidency, an aggressive war against the narcotics trade was launched, escalating violent conflict both between rival drug cartels and between the cartels and the government. External economic and environmental shocks have compounded instability and the effectiveness of the current War on Drugs is questioned as government control continues to weaken and cartel influence increases. These factors lead this analysis to conclude that an overall downward trend can be recognized in Mexico.

[AdamG]

Drug Wars in Tamaulipas: Cartels vs. Zetas vs. the Military
The Baxters on one side, the Rojos on the other...

Mexican military copter over U.S. neighborhood

*
U.S. downplays Mexican chopper incursion

BROWNSVILLE — U.S. officials Friday downplayed the sighting of a Mexican military helicopter hovering as long as 20 minutes over a residential area on the Texas side of the border this week, saying the incursion didn't cause alarm even though it hadn't been cleared in advance.

U.S. agencies could offer no reports of a follow-up investigation and no indication whether a Mexican explanation had been asked for or given.