Drug cartel violence in Mexico: “silver or lead?”
by Hugh Holub on Jun. 20, 2011, under border issues, politicsThe M3 Report graphically depicts the savagery of the Mexican drug cartels.
More on the drug cartel violence from the M3 Report
M3 Report on drug cartel violence and border security
M3 Report ….more from the drug war in Mexico
M3 Report …the drug war in Mexico is deadly serious
One cannot help but look at the pictures of people being hung from bridges, headless and dismembered bodies tossed around the countryside, mass graves of people kidnapped from buses, dead police officers and public officials murdered in their vehicles, and heads strategically placed to draw attention and wonder… are the drug cartel guys are even human?
Just imagine if this kind of violence were common throughout the United States.
Sure…we have our daily share of people getting killed by criminal gangs…but not chopped up like meat in the butcher shop.
What do you think our response would be to criminal gangs doing this kind of stuff in cities and towns all across our country?
You bet there would be one awesome crackdown on the perpetrators of this kind of violence.
But in Mexico this is daily life.
Can you imagine living in a place where when you get up in the morning that is what you see?
Can you imagine being afraid to even go outside your home with cartelistas shooting at each other?
Can you imagine how many Mexicans are uiltimately going to flee north to escape this horror? How many already have?
What would you do if you were living in the midst of this kind of situation?
I am getting reports from a border city on the other side of the line that has been essentially taken over by one of the cartels. It is medieval sounding….people are slaves in their own home town.
Then there was news that cartel criminals in Mexico are seizing oil supplies and pipelines. Can it get any worse?
Imagine if the Mafia started stealing oil from our refineries and pipelines?
Mexico is a failing state with an army it cannot trust and a police force it’s people cannot trust.
The cartels give military, the police and everyone else a choice….”plomo o plata”…. Lead or silver….meaning you either die or get paid off.
Meanwhile there is a really stupid debate on what to call the “cartels”. Are they “transnational criminal organizations”? Drug trafficking organizations? Terrorist organizations? Organized crime?
Whatever you want to call them….they are savages.
Mexican President Calderon has a choice to make….is he going to continue to sit in his palace in Mexico City and blame US drug users for his problem…is he going to look the other way while larger and larger areas of his country fall under the control of the cartels…or is he going to tap into the honesty and spirit of the Mexican people and get rid of the cartels?
Mexico is unfortunately a perfect example of a society where only the bad guys have guns.
Instead of attacking our gun laws, as Calderon has done…maybe he ought to see to it that every Mexican can protect themselves and protect their families and protect their homes and their villages and cities and towns from the cartels.
Maybe instead of our ATF “walking” guns to the cartels, the ATF ought to foster supplying guns to the citizens of Mexico who want to fight off the cartels.
Indeed the consequences will be bloody…but what is the alternative? More mass graves and headless bodies all over Mexico until their government falls and the cartels turn Mexico into a NarcoState?
Mexico is really squirrelly when it comes to their sovereignty. God forbid a US Border Patrol agent shoots back at a drug cartel gunman that fires on our guys from their side of the border.
Yet incursions of what at least appear to be the Mexican military into the US side of the border are surprisingly common. There are several of these “incursions” that have occurred west of Nogales. One of the more infamous occured near Arivaca on the Tres Bellotes Ranch in 2006.
The US cannot secure our border just on our side of the line.
The cartel has to be removed from the Mexican side of the border.
If Mexico City or the state governments down there cannot do that…maybe we need to work out an agreement with Calderon that allows limited US military access into about the first 100 miles on the Mexican side of the border to chase down the cartel associated people and deal with them.
Tough choice for our side, too. Do we legalize drugs and take away the financial fuel that keeps the Mexican drug cartels going?
Do we seek a military solution to the problem?
Or do we keep arguing about more Wilderness Areas along our border?
June 20th, 2011 on 12:41 pm
I’m impressed Hugh, that was a great article.
June 22nd, 2011 on 12:09 pm
For years Mexican drug organizations were second string to the Colombians until the first Bush administration made the Caribbean too hot to handle for them (just ask Manuel Noriega). The Mexicans entered the picture later and, after the killing of Pablo Escobar and the dismantling of the Cali and Medellin cartels, filled the vacuum. Former Mexican President Miguel de La Madrid (hope I spelled that right) earlier this year stated that it was the Zedillo administration that let them do this and to later flourish by taking the bribe and kick-back money they offered for non-action/protection. (He’s old and near death, so has nothing to lose, but the Mexico City newspaper “El Universal” pulled the story the next day after the firestorm it created.) I guess one job is as good as another to the Mexican establishment because the cartels did nothing but consolidate their power under the Fox administration.
Cartels down there flourish because they have an accommodating government and a sympathetic public, at least at first. Only later do they take on a life of their own. Just ask those who remember Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexico’s would be crime fighting Presidential candidate from 1994 who should have been elected instead of Zedillo. Before you attempt to discount or argue with this, consider: Luis Colosio’s assassin was from Michoacan, just like La Familia. Mexico’s Colosio conspiracy controversy is comparable to our Kennedy conspiracy controversy. La Familia never has been the public menace that the Zetas are, yet Calderon’s government has dismantled La Familia while the Zetas are still going strong.
I think the point of the article is that life is cheap to some down there; and it has been for a long time.