Mexico

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Nutmeg, Nov 12, 2009.

  1. Nutmeg

    Nutmeg Member+

    Aug 24, 1999
    Lately my thoughts have been on the unrest in Mexico. What is happening across our border can only be described as unimaginable. To summarize:

    • The Mexican Drug Industry is estimated by Forbes to be worth $25 Billion US annually.

    • The Industry is split between three main Cartels - Sinaloa, Gulf, and Tijuana. There are other minor organizations that depending on the day partner with the main Cartels in manufacturing, importing, and exporting drugs.

    • The three main organizations have been in an all out war for years, but violence has escalated radically in the past three.

    • In Ciudad Juarez alone, 2000 people were murdered in the year 2009 by October. A rate of 7 people were murdered every single day. It is the most dangerous city in the world today. You would be safer in Baghdad or Mogadishu.

    • Sinaloa has become what the Afghanistan/Pakistan border is to Al Qaeda - a safe haven where the kingpin of the Cartel (Shorty Guzman) isn't just sheltered by the people, but by in large revered as a Robin Hood figure.

    • The violence isn't scary just because it's escalating. It isn't just scary because it's close to the US border. It isn't just scary because of the amazing numbers (roughly 7,000 drug war related deaths in 2009).

    • It is scary because of the brutality involved. It is scary because people are killing for the sake of killing. People are being drawn and quartered, dropped in acid, beheaded, tortured, raped, etc.

    • It is scary because an entire political system is built on corruption - police work off the books for the cartels to protect their leadership. The authorities are suspected to be among the worst offenders. Again in Juarez - it is largely suspected that the murder of over 1,000 females was at least in part carried out by the Police. And if a police officer steps forward to overhaul the system, they are killed. Brutally. (The president-appointed Chief of Mexican police was killed this year, sending the message nobody is untouchable.)
    I bring this up because two things bother me about this.

    1) Given the severity of the situation relatively few are talking about it, and
    2) How much of what is happening in Mexico is a consequence of the US Drug policy?

    Curious to hear thoughts in this forum.
     
  2. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The importance of the general public depends a lot on what circles you think/live in. When I was in Tucson, the news from just across the border - no matter if it is Tijuana or Juarez - was almost a nightly event on the local stations. Now that I am in Memphis, the local news has almost totally ignored it.

    IMO, this is akin to what Colombia was in the 1980s.

    Additionally, though I don't have anything substantive to link, a lot of the problem is the use of the justice/penal system in the US. We are using it to punish, yet not addressing the underlying problems of drug use and addiction which is a negative cycle and continues to feed the pockets of the cartels in Mexico and elsewhere.
     
  3. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    Legalize domestically grown smoke and kill their revenue stream. Take the money out of it and it will suffocate. This is the lesson of prohibition.
     
    1 person likes this.
  4. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    How much of the battle in Mexico is over control of weed, and how much is over stuff that no one thinks should be legalized, like meth or heroin?
     
  5. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    Good question. Anyone?
     
  6. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    If weed were legalized most people who like drugs would be too stoned to try to get other shit, so it might not matter what it was. It'd probably make fewer people succeed in getting over the border--we all know how Mexicans like to get high--they'd all be moving so slowly.
     
  7. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    It's a clusterfcuk to be sure and it's spilled over their borders into CA, AZ & TX, but with unemployment at 10% Americans aren't going to be too concerned if thousands of Mexicans are offing each other left & right. As a matter of fact, some US-Americans are probably downright thrilled by that idea.
     
  8. Metrogo

    Metrogo Member

    Apr 6, 1999
    Washington Hghts NY
    I'm not trying to minimize the amount of drug related violence there is in certain regions of Mexico, but having lived in new york city most of my life, I have a sense of the way crime reporting gives a misleading view of the daily lives of ordinary people. So I do think it's important to remember that, even in some of the most violent prone neighborhoods, violence is still the exception, and people don't necessarily live it moment to moment.

    I do think, however, that ignorance, poverty and corruption are endemic to Mexican society, and it's a major cause of violence and decay. Yes, I think the way our society deals with drug use is a problem for ourselves and mexico, but we shouldn't pretend that that's even the main part of the problem.

    At some point, when as a citizen you see corruption going unpunished over and over again, only the most honest and/or secure among us will resist. And when corruption is a part of life for generations, it makes people stupid and selfish and narrowly self interested, and that's it. That's ignorance defined. I have no idea how you break that cycle, and neither did Rudy Giuliani, who was paid $10 million by the government of Mexico city so that we can all find that out about him.
     
  9. DoyleG

    DoyleG Member+

    CanPL
    Canada
    Jan 11, 2002
    YEG-->YYJ-->YWG-->YYB
    Club:
    FC Edmonton
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Cocaine has been a big part of the Mexican cartel's profit line.
     
  10. Shaster

    Shaster Member+

    Apr 13, 1999
    El Cerrito, CA, USA
    A case study is how China changed the Golden Triangle. Esp. with Burma parts of drug area.
     
  11. cleansheetbsc

    cleansheetbsc Member+

    Mar 17, 2004
    Club:
    --other--
    Thrilled? Not really. But if cartels want to shoot at one another like Mafia crime families, have at it.

    The troubling part is when they take out innocents as well. As the original post discusses, honest police officers are victims and on at least two occasions that I've read, these murderers have broken into drug-treatment clinics and gunned down people in there. I don't know what a Mexican clinic looks like compared with a New York one or if the victims were truly innocent or hiding out, but it looks like it is inescapable down there.
     
  12. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    IIRC 90% of the worlds opium supply now comes from our flourishing democracy called Afghanistan

    Good work George Bush!
     
  13. Alan S

    Alan S Member

    Jun 1, 2001
    Palo Alto, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm interested in hearing more about this. Do you have any links?



    Could the US have the FBI help take down the leaders of the cartels down there? Something is needed to break the cycle of corruption.
     
  14. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    You can always ice 2000 people like Thaksin, buy yourself a football team and do a runner out of your country for fraud.
     
  15. aguimarães

    aguimarães Member

    Apr 19, 2006
    Club:
    LD Alajuelense
    The first part sums it up, the violence is primarily along the border rather than engulfing the entire country. Some Central American and Caribbean nations are much worse. Not arguing much as far as the US drug policy, but not only Americans consume drugs. Also, many (hundreds actually) of the rape/murder victims in Juarez are women with no connection to the drug trade. Decriminalization is overrated.
     
  16. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
    I support legalization, but the ending of prohibition didn't end organized crime.
     
  17. Dr. Know

    Dr. Know Member+

    Dec 5, 2005
    Macondo
    Not yet but it's getting there.

    I'm curious, what Caribbean nation is much worse and in what aspect?
     
  18. aguimarães

    aguimarães Member

    Apr 19, 2006
    Club:
    LD Alajuelense
    Jamaica for one, which has the world´s 3rd highest homicide rate. The violence started out as political three decades ago but now is centered mainly around the drug trade. Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Puerto Rico all have higher rates than Mexico.
     
  19. Socrates_81

    Socrates_81 Red Card

    May 27, 2008
    Blank
    Either Americans kick the habit.

    Or The United States and Mexico legalize drugs.

    That's the only way around this problem.
     
    It's called FOOTBALL repped this.
  20. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    It completely changed it, though. It went from Capone to Corleone.
     
  21. Dr. Know

    Dr. Know Member+

    Dec 5, 2005
    Macondo
    If the OP is to be believed there were 2000 murders this year in Ciudad Juarez alone. That is an area much smaller than any of the islands you mentioned and in all the places you mentioned there were less than that.

    In Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic there are drug problems however for the most part it doesn't escalate. Puerto Rican police chiefs aren't being executed. There aren't stand off's between the national guard and gangs. Common people who aren't involved in the drug trade aren't living in fear. All this stuff has been common place in certain parts of Mexico.

    There is no way that you can claim that right now any country in the caribbean is much worse than Mexico with regards to what's happeneing with the drug cartels.
     
  22. aguimarães

    aguimarães Member

    Apr 19, 2006
    Club:
    LD Alajuelense
    Like I said, the entire Mexico´s violence problems aren´t this serious, it´s mainly along the border towns, Tijuana, Laredo, Juarez, etc. and Sinaloa, where the drug trade is centered.

    Kingston Jamaica has little over one million people and averages well over one thousand murders per year, and they´ve had long-standing problems with police and political corruption (though not on Mexico´s level.) Numerous people in the city´s western district who have nothing to do with the drug trade get hit with stray bullets or are victims of mistaken identity by the drug gangs. Similarly, outside of Kingston and neighboring Spanish Town, the island doesn´t have too many problems. Trinidad has its problem spots as well as safe areas too.
     
  23. Dr. Know

    Dr. Know Member+

    Dec 5, 2005
    Macondo
    No one has said different. Just like in most of the places you mentioned the violence is mainly centered around the slums or other points where there is heavy drug activity.

    I've been to Kingston and know people currently there who have never encountered any problems. Nothing that I've read or seen there makes me think it's much worst than what I've read about places like Juarez.

    Plus using the murder rate example isn't really fair when comparing huge countries with large populations to small islands. For example if we add the populations of Juarez and Tijuana we get roughly the same population of Jamaica. Yet if we add the amount of murders in Juarez and Tijuana it's clearly higher than the number of murders in Jamaica as a whole.
     
  24. aguimarães

    aguimarães Member

    Apr 19, 2006
    Club:
    LD Alajuelense
    Mexico is a much larger country, and it´s trouble areas are obviously much larger than Jamaicas. What I was getting at is that Mexico is mostly a rural country (in the small towns there are next to no problems) and are actually very safe. Corruption is a big problem in Mexico even by Latin American standards, but there seems to be a stereotype that the nation is engulfed in some sort of low-level civil war because of the drug cartels. Anyone who´s visited the country knows that isn´t the case.

    Another example is Colombia. The Civil War being raged by the guerillas, paramilitary groups and the Colombian army is going on in the countryside, the cities haven´t had many problems since Escobar was killed, despite the way the media sensationalizes it. It would be similar to using sky-high murder rates in Miami or New York in the 1980s to claim America as a whole was being intimidated by violent gangs, when most Americans have never even seen a gun being fired. Outside of major cities America is one of the safest countries in the world.

    Here are world homicide statistics. Outside of nations like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where safe areas are the exception rather than the norm, the numbers are very general and don´t give an accurate picture of most nations.
     
  25. Metrogo

    Metrogo Member

    Apr 6, 1999
    Washington Hghts NY
    This is exactly right.
     

Share This Page