The news from Mexico doesn't get better ....
I am not referring to the spat with the US over the immigrant trails running north to the US border.
No I am talking about the ongoing war with the drug barons, which to put it bluntly, the Mexican government is losing .... and losing very badly.
The cost of this defeat is simply catastrophic for Mexican society. The drug demand in the US, is the financial fuel for the fires of corruption in Mexican law and government, whilst the guns smuggled into the country from their northern neighbour, are the matches for the armed muscle of the narco-gangs, who are often better armed than the police forces ranged against them.
But perhaps the worse aspect of this failure, are the mass murders ..... they are simply horrific in nature and scale. The latest of these burial pits to be uncovered, was 44 bodies buried in a well, in the state of Jalisco, just outside the city of Guadalajara. The human remains were wrapped in 119 black bags. This is the second major find of bodies in state of Jalisco alone this year, and many of the body parts still remain unidentified. Beheadings and torture have become commonplace over the past decade, and no one can stand up against them.
Basically law and order has broken down at the local level and victims are sometimes hung from bridges or dissolved in barrels of acid, with graphic execution videos often posted on social media to intimidate their rivals, as well the local population and authorities.
Last year saw a record number of murders with more than 29,000 recorded and that figure is expected to be passed this year. From January to July 2019, more than 20,000 murders were reported (there will also be many unreported homicides), a 4% rise from the same period in 2018. "Our data shows that we've brought the situation under control," claimed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican President .... hmm, elsewhere these sorts of figures would be a complete failure, but I guess it depends upon your starting point.
More than 200,000 people have been killed or have disappeared since Mexico's government declared war on organised crime in December 2006, there are possibly another 37,000 just classed as missing. Its estimated that organised crime accounted for nearly three-quarters of those murders or disappearances.
This has led to groups who perform tasks which are unknown elsewhere in the normal world .... There are groups who search the countryside in the cartel areas, looking for bodies, and mass graves. The local forensic doctors have become experts at rehydrating human flesh in order to be able to get fingerprints from the corpses, or find identifying marks, such as tattoos.
The current Mexican President aims to have a 80,000-strong force new security force, the national guard by the end of 2019 .... however reports suggest that as most murders of police officers in Mexico go unpunished, there has been no mad rush to enrol in this national guard. In the first six months of 2019, 235 municipal, state and federal police were killed, two more than in the same period in 2018. So more than 58,000 officers from other security forces, have had to be transferred into the National Guard to make up for the shortfall in civilian recruits. So he's simply transferring the problems with the current policing forces, into his new force.
There just seems to be no solution to the drug cycle, and certainly not via a 'war on drugs' approach .... only legalisation and state production of class A drugs will stop the criminal drugs money fuelling societal collapses across the globe.
The funds raised by legalised sales might even be used to try and normalise societies broken by the last fifty years of drug dealing.
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| Migrant 'Caravan' Stopped In Mexico |
I am not referring to the spat with the US over the immigrant trails running north to the US border.
No I am talking about the ongoing war with the drug barons, which to put it bluntly, the Mexican government is losing .... and losing very badly.
 |
| Mexican Cartel Areas And Travel Advice |
The cost of this defeat is simply catastrophic for Mexican society. The drug demand in the US, is the financial fuel for the fires of corruption in Mexican law and government, whilst the guns smuggled into the country from their northern neighbour, are the matches for the armed muscle of the narco-gangs, who are often better armed than the police forces ranged against them.
But perhaps the worse aspect of this failure, are the mass murders ..... they are simply horrific in nature and scale. The latest of these burial pits to be uncovered, was 44 bodies buried in a well, in the state of Jalisco, just outside the city of Guadalajara. The human remains were wrapped in 119 black bags. This is the second major find of bodies in state of Jalisco alone this year, and many of the body parts still remain unidentified. Beheadings and torture have become commonplace over the past decade, and no one can stand up against them.
Basically law and order has broken down at the local level and victims are sometimes hung from bridges or dissolved in barrels of acid, with graphic execution videos often posted on social media to intimidate their rivals, as well the local population and authorities.
Last year saw a record number of murders with more than 29,000 recorded and that figure is expected to be passed this year. From January to July 2019, more than 20,000 murders were reported (there will also be many unreported homicides), a 4% rise from the same period in 2018. "Our data shows that we've brought the situation under control," claimed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican President .... hmm, elsewhere these sorts of figures would be a complete failure, but I guess it depends upon your starting point.
More than 200,000 people have been killed or have disappeared since Mexico's government declared war on organised crime in December 2006, there are possibly another 37,000 just classed as missing. Its estimated that organised crime accounted for nearly three-quarters of those murders or disappearances.
This has led to groups who perform tasks which are unknown elsewhere in the normal world .... There are groups who search the countryside in the cartel areas, looking for bodies, and mass graves. The local forensic doctors have become experts at rehydrating human flesh in order to be able to get fingerprints from the corpses, or find identifying marks, such as tattoos.
The current Mexican President aims to have a 80,000-strong force new security force, the national guard by the end of 2019 .... however reports suggest that as most murders of police officers in Mexico go unpunished, there has been no mad rush to enrol in this national guard. In the first six months of 2019, 235 municipal, state and federal police were killed, two more than in the same period in 2018. So more than 58,000 officers from other security forces, have had to be transferred into the National Guard to make up for the shortfall in civilian recruits. So he's simply transferring the problems with the current policing forces, into his new force.
There just seems to be no solution to the drug cycle, and certainly not via a 'war on drugs' approach .... only legalisation and state production of class A drugs will stop the criminal drugs money fuelling societal collapses across the globe.
The funds raised by legalised sales might even be used to try and normalise societies broken by the last fifty years of drug dealing.
The release of El Chapos son after a gun battle with the police indicates who are the stronger between the Narcos and state.
ReplyDeleteI have posted before on the unhappy state that Mexico is in. They look as though they may become the biggest state to lose to the Narcos in the Drug War. Its ironic that its the US drug habit that's created the biggest drug state to form right on its own border.
DeleteThanks for the comment. They are always appreciated.
According to the latest reports: More than 60,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since the start of the country's war on drugs in 2006, according to authorities.
ReplyDeleteThe number is far higher than previous estimates of around 40,000. On top of this, more than 31,000 people were murdered in the country last year alone.
You can't help but feel that western drug users have this blood on their hands.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-53332756
ReplyDeleteTerrible .... when is it classed as a failed state.
Ecuador is heading in the same direction as Mexico. Recent news stories include police storming prisons to try and rescue hostages held by drug gangs operating inside them and mayor's being assassinated by drug cartels.
DeleteIt seems that drug gangs are taking a grip in many South American countries and we could be heading towards narco-states in many parts of the world e.g. Syria where its involvement with the production of Captagon (a drug that is relatively unknown outside the Middle East), has helped Syria turn into a narco-state. Thanks for the comment.
DeleteMs Andrea Gonzalez, the presidential electoral running-mate of murdered Ecuadorian politician Fernando Villavicencio who was shot three times in the head by Colombian gunmen is to contest the presidential election in his place.
ReplyDeleteEcuador had largely escaped the decades of drug-gang violence, cartel wars and corruption that has blighted many of its neighbours but in recent years crime has shot up, fuelled by the growth of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.
A mayor shot as he was inspecting public works, bodies strung from bridges, gang leaders publishing videos in which they threaten to kill politicians unless they do their bidding - a seemingly endless litany of violence has dominated the headlines in a country previously known for its comparative safety.
In 2018, the murder rate stood at 5.8 per 100,000 inhabitants but by 2023 Ecuador's homicide rate had more than quadrupled.
Mr Villavicencio's campaign had focused on the corruption and drug gangs, and he was one of only a few candidates to allege links between organised crime and government officials in Ecuador.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-66459310
Yep, the 'war on drugs' was lost even before it was declared. The West's appetite for drugs seems never ending, and the growing appetite for the drugs in the producers societies and elsewhere encourages the drug cartels expansion in the third world and smaller wealthier countries.
DeleteIt will be to our eternal shame that future societies will not understand how or why the West wasn't able to educate, or force, its citizens to stop taking drugs such as heroin, cocaine and their chemical derivatives ... and thus corrupting whole swathes of those societies producing or consuming the drugs.
As an example, Approximately 500 Mexican cities are directly engaged in drug trafficking and nearly 450,000 people are employed by drug cartels. Additionally, the livelihood of 3.2 million people is dependent on the drug cartels ... the cartels in Mexico see a $25–30bn yearly profit, some of which supports local jobs.
So the drug cartels are now integrated in to the very fabric of these countries. Thanks for the comment.