As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, the death toll in Mexico’s drug wars has reached new highs, or lows, with 69 people dying in a 24 hour period. A total 283 individuals have died in drug war violence since the New Year turned, including several beheadings.
The context of this rising tide of violence and death lies in the struggle to control the country’s hugely lucrative illicit drug trade. When President Calderón came to power in 2006, he launched an unprecedented campaign to destroy the organized crime groups that control the trade. It has so far resulted in around 14,000 deaths, and some 50,000 soldiers and Federal Police have been deployed by the government. Nonetheless, the death toll continues to escalate. The trade is structured around the activities of 6 major cartels, and killings and arrests of various high profile figures have served only to sharpen the competition for power. Not only cartel soldiers but police and vigilantes are implicated in murder and torture.
The situation has strong historical parallels to the other great 20th century Prohibition: the USA’s ‘Noble Experiment’ with the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933, which issued in bloody gang violence and gave American organized crime access to almost unlimited funds, and the political and law-enforcement corruption that went them. Mexico’s response to the ills of prohibition has primarily been a military one, a strategy that has received the support of the United States (which is also the source of the firearms used on all sides). It is becoming increasingly clear that this strategy is not working, and that more fundamental measures are necessary to take the drugs industry out of the control of criminal organizations.
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As I understand it, over-extension is almost always the most important reason for the end of empires. Looks as if the War on Terror and the War on Drugs together are writing on the wall, spelling the end of the US/UN/UK Axis.
ReplyDeleteThe use of the word 'cartel' in this context always baffles me. I thought a cartel was a legal organisation of producers who work together to control a commodity or service, e.g. oil production and distribution, OPEC being the most obvious example. These competitive criminal groups in Mexico are just that - nothing like an organised and co-operative group of producers and/or service providers. I wonder why this peculiar use of the word came about?