Mexico…a partly failed state
by Hugh Holub on Apr. 28, 2011, under border issues, border patrol, border patrol tucson sector, drug smuggling, mexican drug cartels, mexico, politicsThose of us familiar with northern Mexico have long worried about the collapse of governmental control in parts of that country
There is a constant flow of information coming out from the area west of Nogales over to the Sasabe area and south to Altar about how one of the drug cartels has taken control of the area and turned it into a narco kingdom
An interesting report from the Foreign Policy Ressearch Institute:
By David J. Danelo
…The volume of violence is where the similarities end. Unlike the FARC in Colombia, Mexico’s drug cartels have no desire to reshape their country in accordance with Marxist ideology. In thought and behavior, Mexico’s narcotics groups have more in common with Somali pirates than Colombian rebels: both groups seek to create anarchy so they can exploit the defenseless and dominate local markets. Like Somali pirates in East Africa’s coastal villages, Los Zetas and their ilk have thrived in stateless voids, stealing money from merchants and becoming minor celebrities within their respective regions.
While Colombia faced a political insurgency, Mexico confronts something like land piracy. The drug kingpins are bandits, shameless and powerful, sailing untouched through the mountainous seas of the Sierra Madres and Rio Grande Basin, marauding wantonly in their fleets of pickup trucks and SUVs. The absence of politics does not make Mexico’s problems any less virulent, and analysts should pause before dismissing the drug violence as “only a criminal problem” simply because the Sinaloa Cartel lacks a political ideology.
Danelo goes into considerable detail on Mexican history, noting that some areas like the Rio Grand Valley and what he calls the Sierra Madre region (which is what is south of us) has never really been under long term effective control of Mexico’s central government…going back to when it was a Spanish colony.
Here in Tubac, with the burnt ruins of various attempts at securing this area since 1752 lying buried in our yards, the struggle to secure the area from the Apaches, through various revolutions down south, and now the invasion of drug cartel gunmen is especially relevant.
For a very long time residents in the borderlands have had to keep their guns handy because authorities in capital cities far away had better things to do than protect the settlements that tried to grow and prosper around here. The archeology of the borderlands is measured not in layers of broken pottery…but in layers of spent shell casings.
Danelo makes the point that central government authority in Mexico is still functioning in that country’s major urban areas like Mexico City.
But out in the rural areas of the north, it is bandit country. His characterization of Mexico’s rural areas being taken over by the equivalents of Somali pirates rings true.
The reality for the United States is our border will never be secure no matter how much we do on our side of the border if there are lawless territories controlled by drug cartels across the line from us.
The United States is floating billions of dollars in attempts to aid the Mexican central government to root out the drug cartel cancer. But short of invading northern Mexico with our troops (an extremely unlikely scenario) the only sure path to create secure civilized zones across the border is to assist in the development of rural communities and economies through non-governmental organizations working in those areas so they can resist takeover by the cartels….and hopefully assist the state governments in northern Mexico to be able to provide law enforcement protection to rural communities so the cartel gangs can be chased out.
There is extreme danger to the US borderlands if large areas along the border fall under the control of the drug cartels…and they are obviously seizing territory and controlling it for their purposes.
One very interesting observation from sources within the Department of Homeland Security is that the amount of illegal immigrant traffic being experienced along the border between Arizona and Sonora has been greatly reduced not by effective Border Patrol activity…but because the cartels control acces to our border now and don’t let a lot of illegal immigrants cross their “territory” out of concern that the US will beef up Border Patrol presence in the cartels’ drug smuggling corridors.
When it comes to responsiveness from Homeland Security to deploy Border Patrol on our border, stopping the flow of illegal immigrants in and near urban areas appears to take precedence over stopping drug cartel smuggling operations….at least in the Pima and Santa Cruz county areas of the border.
It will make no sense to “secure the border” by putting a lot of Border Patrol agents right at the border so drug cartel gunmen can shoot at our folks from the hilltops in cartel controlled territory just across the line.
To really secure the border will require effective action by Mexico as well as the United States.
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More…..
Apprehensions of illegal aliens at the border are way down…why?
Border Patrol Banned From Top Smuggler Routes
Republicans Introduce Bill to Secure Border on Federal Lands, Protect Environment
GAO confirms federal environmental laws and federal land managers hinder securing our border
Rancher tells Congress the way it really is down at the border
DHS testifies at same hearing as border rancher…compare the view of the border situation
Arizona Rancher Blows Away Bureaucrats at Border Hearing
What does “securing the border” really mean?
Restore our Border plan from the Arizona Cattle Growers Association
Senators Kyl and McCain propose new border security plan
Utah Congressman Bishop seeks greater security for the border…not Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva
Probationary Presence…another Immigration Law Reform Proposal
Illegal entry and drug smuggling in perspective…what if all this was going on in your front yard?
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April 28th, 2011 on 1:45 pm
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It will make no sense to “secure the border” by putting a lot of Border Patrol agents right at the border so drug cartel gunmen can shoot at our folks from the hilltops in cartel controlled territory just across the line.
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They can shoot at our folks on the US side all the way up to Pinal county. There are 75-100 cartel observation posts in Pinal County alone.
April 28th, 2011 on 4:59 pm
To secure the border we need to secure our homes by example ! eliminate drug consumption, that make cash flow and guns back to Mexico and other countries in America, corupting everything in front of it.
April 29th, 2011 on 10:19 am
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Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use, among all echelons of society, is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.
By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model – the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous and ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved. Thus the allure of this reliable and lucrative industry, with it’s enormous income potential that consistently outweighs the risks associated with the illegal operations that such a trade entails, will remain with us until we are collectively forced to admit the obvious.
There is therefore an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. Anybody ‘halfway bright’, and who’s not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you’re using something far stronger than the rest of us. So put away your pipe, lock yourself away in a small room with some tinned soup and water, and try to crawl back into reality A.S.A.P.
Because Drug cartels will always have an endless supply of ready cash for wages, bribery and equipment, no amount of tax money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again. Only an end to prohibition can do that! How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you support the Kool-Aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, tortured corpses, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, economic tribulation, unemployment and the complete loss of the rule of law.
The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!
Prohibition is nothing less than a grotesque dystopian nightmare; if you support it you must be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
“A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”
– Leon Festinger
April 28th, 2011 on 3:43 pm
How much longer must the citizens and voters of AZ wait before the feds begin shooting back and actually securing the border? The inaction of the federal government to secure the border with Mexico means that border security must now become a state responsibility as long as the feds abdicate their responsibility. This has also given rise to citizen groups attempting to protect themselves and their communities in the vacuum left by the feds and to a lesser degree, the state. Personally, I am for border security by whatever means necessary to get the job done, be it by the feds, the state, or by private citizen militia type groups. Lets just do it, it has long needed to be done effectively. A secure border with Mexico is way overdue.
April 29th, 2011 on 10:18 am
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The illegal drug trade is now estimated to be somewhere in the region of $400 billion a year ( equal to the defense budget ). This “former land of the free” arrests 1.5 million of it’s citizens a year for drug law violations, half for marijuana alone, The majority of the 2.2 million inmates in the USA are incarcerated because of this insane drug war (Prohibition 2) at a staggering cost to all taxpayers and trauma to their families.
Prisons have been filled to capacity. Violent criminals, murderers, rapists and child molesters are released early to create space for these so called drug offenders. Half of court trial time and also a huge chunk of police officers time is pointlessly wasted. Enormous untaxed profits from illegal drugs fund multi-national criminal empires which bribe law enforcement authorities and spread corruption faster than a raging bush fire. These laws take violent criminals and turn them into multi-billionaires whilst corrupting even entire countries such as Columbia, Panama, Mexico and Afghanistan. The extreme violence on and south of the border is drug gangs fighting for turf in this lucrative business. The drug laws are also funding the Taliban whose illegal opium profits allow it to buy weapons and pay it’s fighters more than $300 a month, compared with the $14 paid to an Afghan policemen.
The definition of insanity is great folly, madness, extreme senselessness, lunacy. The present drug laws cause all of the above and may therefor be deemed insane.
There will be many of you who probably fear a theoretical free-for-all, but that overlooks one major point: That’s exactly the situation we have at the moment. Sure, there are laws against the possession and sale of these drugs, but they have no impact on actually restricting either one. When we allow such drugs to remain in the criminal market, they finance the activities of street punks, violent gangs, drug lords and terrorists. That’s why there is now such an urgent need to legalize, which will not only allow us to properly regulate these substances, but also strip the illegal cartels of their main income.
So please consider the following very carefully : It wasn’t the alcohol that caused the surge in crime and homicide during alcohol prohibition, it was prohibition itself. That’s why many of us find it hard to believe that the same thing is not happening now. We clearly have a prohibition fueled violent crime problem. A huge number of these violent crimes are perpetrated by criminal syndicates and gangs who use the proceeds form the sales of illegal substances to further even more of their criminal activities.
Prohibition is nothing less than a grotesque dystopian nightmare; if you support it you must be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
April 29th, 2011 on 5:06 pm
Hey ho, Folks!
I just came safely back from another jaunt into Nogales, Sonora.
Didn’t feel unsafe.
Not even for a moment.
May 6th, 2011 on 3:20 pm
how much money is costing the america tax payer. the failure of the us govertment to control our border. over 40 years of doing nothing. thanks for nothing mr obaba