ThreatsWatch.Org: RapidRecon: Mexican Violence Continues to Unfold
Last week in Ciudad Juarez Mexico, four police officers were murdered in four separate attacks. This brings the 2008 murder toll in Juarez alone (across the border from El Paso) to 1,300; in all of Mexico, the death toll has reached more than 5,300, more than twice 2007. This is based on government figures.
All of this happens in a year following the deployment of over 20,000 military troops across the country by President Calderon in an attempt to quell the violence of the drug cartels. The change in Administration will not change the danger posed to Americans by the continuing and expanding drug cartel violence. At the same time, reports of drug cartel-related violence crossing the border to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas continue. Further, the blending of the drug cartels with youth gangs now threatens to spread to border cities. The question of border (in)security is much more than the continuing flow of illegal immigrants.
If it wasn’t such a serious situation it might not be believable. In an unrelated crime, last week anti-kidnapping consultant Felix Batista was kidnapped in Mexico.
In high school, I lived for a year in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we used to go to Juarez just to do something different, see the world, etc. I’m thinking that wouldn’t be such a great idea this year. Mexico seems not only to be a third world country, it seems on the way to becoming another Somalia, characterized by factions at war, kidnapping, the inability of the central government to keep the factions under control, the whole nine yards.
Build the fence, Mr. President-elect. Yesterday.
January 4th, 2009 9:44 am
It seems to me that the drug cartel problem lies squarely at the foot of the American drug consumer. There is no consequence to being a drug user in this country for all that it is supposedly illegal to do so. Drug cartels are merely suppliers for a very hungry consumer and the competition is stiff. We are a society that won’t allow severe consequences for destructive behavior because the perpetrators are our children. If we didn’t have any form of welfare, we wouldn’t have illegal immigration issues from Mexico. We didn’t have a severe problem 50 years ago did we? And there was no fence.
January 7th, 2009 1:04 pm
Wow… do you really believe that?
Wrong. We have illegal immigration issues because people can make more money here than in Mexico. Period.
January 7th, 2009 4:33 pm
Yes, Dave, I really do observe that. Tell me what the consequence is for USING illegal drugs here?
I wonder why people can make more money here than in Mexico? Maybe we could share some of our ideas with the Mexican government and solve the problem?
January 7th, 2009 8:49 pm
It depends on the state and what kind of drug you have, but I believe most illegal drugs carry jail time and/or fines. I don’t know that the language in any drug law specifically mentions the usage of the drugs, but they deal with possession. If a cop walked in on you taking illegal drugs you would (obviously) be charged with possession. So, maybe you think the penalties aren’t stiff enough (you’d prefer executions, maybe?), but the fact of the matter is that there are fairly stiff penalties for possessing (and therefore using) illegal drugs.
The reason for the economic disparity between the US and Mexico is a huge discussion. I do think it is interesting that you would want the Mexican government to “solve” the “problem” when you clearly are not a proponent of government intervention in economics. Why the double standard?
January 7th, 2009 11:45 pm
Hello Hello,
The world is FULL of people who have been arrested for possession and gotten a good talking to and let loose, if even that. Things have changed a LOT in this area in the last years… maybe your info is old. There are streets in the LA area where cops can bust people all day long for possession, but they don’t, and everyone knows it. It matters less what penalties are on the books than what penalties are enforced.
Re: Mexico’s economy, the problem isn’t insufficient government intervention in its economy, the problem is basically two-fold:
1) Too MUCH intervention in the economy that strangles entrepreneurial activity, basically too much corruption, too much payola, too much use of government power (influenced by the rich) to hold down newcomers into business and commerce, etc.
2) Too much (WAY too much) utter inability of the government to stop crime, to stop protection rackets, guarantee the enforcement of contracts, protect new businesses from violence from competitors, just to name a few problems. In Mexico, it’s much, much worse than the Old West has often been portrayed to be in the USA, but mostly wasn’t.
So: inadequate freedom FROM government interference, combined with inadequate protection BY the government against criminal enterprise (which is often part OF the government, whether officially or unofficially).
Before you can understand why Mexico is poor, you have to understand why the USA is rich. Poverty is (and has always been) the normal human condition, and needs no study, its causes being blindingly obvious and built into the universe. What requires understanding and study is how entire societies have gotten rich, so that the knowledge of how to get rich can be applied to poor ones.