“García Luna, who once stood at the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live the rest of his days having been revealed as a traitor to his country and to the honest members of law enforcement who risked their lives to dismantle drug cartels.”
Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace on February 21st after the drug-cartel-related conviction of a former Mexican cabinet member and ex-Public Security Secretary
“Why don’t you take care of your young people? Why don’t you take care of the serious problem of social decay? Why don’t [you] temper the constant increase in drug consumption?”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador López Obrador asked the US in his daily news conference on March 9th
After four US citizens traveling to the easternmost part of northern Mexico – Matamoros – for vastly less expensive medical treatments/procedures and prescription drugs, were abducted from their white van (pictured above) on March 3rd, the FBI issued a $50,000 reward for the arrest and capture of the perpetrators and the safe return of the Americans. By making arrest of the perps a condition of the reward, the FBI side-stepped the US government ban on paying ransoms. Some in Mexico claimed it was a case of mistaken identity; the Americans were mistaken as participants on the “other side” of a cartel war. The Americans were found. There were three casualties: two dead, one shot and one unharmed. International pressure was so strong that a major cartel even apologized and turned its killers of the Americans.
Most should be aware that the Mexican border region with the US is exceptionally dangerous; the litany of well publicized accounts in every medium imaginable makes that very clear. But even my Mexican-born wife, a retired engineer who emigrated to the United States and became a citizen decades ago, will not cross the border or fly into her former homeland. She knows that every corner of Mexico is run directly or indirectly by drug cartels. She remembers the kidnappings that began decades ago, the ransom demands, and those who were never found again even when those demands were met.
As the above referenced quote suggests, the corrupt reach of the Mexican drug cartels goes all the way to the top. Even as Luna protested his innocence, the evidence against him was overwhelming. “García Luna, who denied the allegations, headed Mexico’s federal police and was later the country's top public safety official from 2006 to 2012. His lawyers said the charges were based on lies from criminals who wanted to punish his drug-fighting efforts and to get sentencing breaks for themselves by helping prosecutors.” ABC News, February 21st.
Even as US authorities worked with and through Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the hovering dirty little secret that is seldom discussed – that cartels control Mexico – was swept aside. It is generally accepted, for example, that while most of the big Mexico premium hotels may be managed by Western companies, most of them are actually owned by the cartels or high-ranking shot callers. There literally is no safe place in the entire country, although some areas are more dangerous than others.
But this malignancy very much reflects failed American policies and denialism. As I have blogged repeatedly, there is no way these cartels could have reached the pinnacle of power – well beyond Mexico – without the ample supply of high-tech guns (estimated to be around 90% of all cartel weapons) easily purchased in and smuggled from the United States. Indeed, American gunmakers have even emblazoned Mexico hero-bandits on many of those weapons. Good marketing strategy, right?
The money generated from American addicts and social drug users has fueled the cartel rise to power and given them the money to buy stockpiles of those guns. Cartels have better weapons than the local Mexican police, many of whom are on cartel payrolls anyway. Cartel power would not exist without this money and the ability to buy those weapons, many of which are military grade. Want to buy a legal gun in Mexico? Three years, training, background checks, psychological exams… and you can buy one gun from the only legal gun store in Mexico.
But those cartels terrorize locals from northern South America, then Central America, particularly through the triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras… then into Mexico. There is no recourse, no police who can arrest offending killer cartel operatives in so many communities, even entire countries, for those impoverished victims whose sons are often force-recruited into cartel armies. The infamous MS-13 began in Los Angeles but eventually became super-powerful in El Salvador.
So, fearing for their lives, unable to make a living in war-torn cartel country, caravans of victims make their way to the US border seeking a safe place to survive. Surviving a horrific world, made that way with major complicity of US gun laws, US drug money and US-backed local politicians and police who are on cartel payrolls. Indeed, Republicans continue to fight meaningful gun control and push against asylum-seekers, victims of gangs with smuggled US-made weapons, trying to escape their American-made hell. Our last significant immigration legislation was passed in 1986. Republicans have since fought every effort to update that policy, even when proposed by GOP presidents.
Americans also pay the highest prescription drug prices anywhere. Any GOP plan on point has always tried to protect the massive profits generated by pharmaceutical companies operating in the US. We are the only developed nation without universal healthcare, with many red states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans. This pushes an increasing number of Americans, especially those near our southern border, to seek medical and dental treatments in Mexico and to buy prescription drugs they cannot afford in the United States. Medical needs. And even simple tourism.
It happens all the time. The March 7th Associated Press describes one former tourism favorite: “The State Department’s travel warning for Tamaulipas [the state where Matamoros is located] warns U.S. citizens not to travel there. However, with it being a border city, U.S. citizens who live in Brownsville or elsewhere in Texas frequently cross to visit family, attend medical appointments or shop. It would also be a crossing point for people traveling deeper into Mexico.
“As the headquarters of the powerful Gulf cartel, Matamoros was once relatively calm. For years, a night out in Matamoros was also part of the ‘two-nation vacation’ for spring breakers flocking to Texas’ South Padre Island… But increased cartel violence over the last 10 to 15 years frightened away much of that business. Sometimes U.S. citizens are swept up in the violence.
“Three U.S. siblings disappeared near Matamoros in October 2014 and were later found shot to death and burned. They had disappeared two weeks earlier while visiting their father in Mexico. Their parents said they had been abducted by men dressed in police gear identifying themselves as ‘Hercules,’ a tactical security unit in the violent border city.” Violence has reached into beachy and historic cultural travel venues in every corner of the country, costing Mexico billions in lost travel-related revenues. So what? The cartels control the country, and they love our guns and money. Tourism is chump change to them.
I’m Peter Dekom, and for American Republican hardliners, their refusal to take the slightest responsibility for the horrors they have caused or enabled is infuriating.
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