The Mexican Border Drug Wars

[Edu]

I dont mean to minimize the problem- some cities in Mexico (Juarez) are just pure terrible, however, large parts are calm.

Well, I remember of that Mexican girl I spoke with over the Internet, living in a city 2 hours down the US border, she didn't tell me her city was particularly touched by drug war, she seemed to be slightly upper middle class, and she wasn't the kind to complain at all or to spread herself on that topic, but at one point she just told me in a kind of 'desperately amused' exclamation that she could seriously 'be shot anytime in street!'. So well, maybe not high figures of dead people all over the country but since, even if by lesser extent in some places, the problem would be largely present, it makes people living in a war feeling with all the fear they have to deal with. Not to speak about the way they prosecute, which adds horror to crime.

Well, that is a pretty common statement all over Latin America, sometimes based on facts, sometimes based on overblown and exaggerated media news reporting.

[Edu]

Of course Mexico is overall much worse than some other countries, but my point is to always be careful of those kind of statements were people say they are going to be killed if they walk outside their homes at night and then start living some kind of paranoid life.

If you live in Ciudad Juarez or some of the worst places in Venezuela, Brazil or Argentina you could probably back that statement with something, but as patrick said not everywhere in Mexico is in a state of war with thousands of homicides. I mean, the City of Buenos Aires has a population of 3 million and between 150 and 200 homicides per year, one of the lowest rates in a major south American city and lower even than many cities in the US. In fact you have more chance of being assassinated in New York than in Buenos Aires. But if you ask the average Joe on the street and ask how many murders do you think take place every day in the city they'll probably answer "5 per day" or something, when in reality is 1 every 2 days or 1 per day at the absolute worst.

I agree with patrick in the sense that there are large parts of Mexico that are either calm or business as usual at worst, in fact i would venture that most places in Mexico are like this, despite the drug war or whatever it's called. Of course if Mexican tv overflows the airwaves 24/7 talking about the drug war, sooner or later people will start feeling paranoid. Here in Argentina every time there is a murder they talk about it on tv till they are out of breath and if you live in the metropolitan area located in the province of Buenos Aires then maybe you have cause to worry, in the city and the rest of the country...not so much.

I just wrote this just to say that people should be careful of those kinds of statements. Mexico is in a bad situation, but it's not like everywhere there has become a hellhole and people can't live anymore. Plus i don't read much about the conflict itself, but aren't those famous beheadings something that happens between drug dealers? i haven't heard about hordes of thugs decapitating regular people like in Algeria, it looks to me like another overreaction, but if someone could provide a link i would stand corrected.

[Edu]

Well, I haven't a link to provide right now, but amongst the memories I can have of the different things I heard from there, there has been blind killings in teenagers parties, mothers shot with babies, anti-toxicomans centers targeted by full blind killing of all caretakers and patients, cars blown up n the street, amongst other things I don't remind exactly of and without speaking of all the shootings that can happen in street and that can touch anybody.

Again, I'm not saying they are in a great situation, the attacks on the rehabilitation centers (quite a few of them) are more violent that the stuff people might be used to, but from a google search every one of the cases of rehabilitation centers attacked were located in Ciudad Juarez, it doesn't look like a nationwide epidemic.
About the mother with her son, after much searching in google i found 1 link of this thing happening in Ciudad Juarez (though looking at another link there seems to be a confusion about it since one says the baby dies and the other one says that just the mother died). Apparently it was during a shootout between the police and criminals, horrible yes.

Anyway, my question in this respect was about the beheadings that StatesRights mentioned in another post. I haven't searched this one because I'm sure there are tons of articles and I'm not in the mood right now to read about decapitations But maybe someone that knows more about them can comment. How many have there been in the last few years? How many civilians were beheaded? Is it just something that happens between gangs and maybe if they kidnap a cop or something like that? Are we sure that these people were beheaded before they were killed or did they happen afterwards? These are honest questions, I frankly don't know.

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As I understood from what you said, she was upper middle class (or middle class) living in a city that wasn't that much touched by the drug war, sorry if I misunderstood or if you didn't really know and just ventured a guess. It just caught my eye because someone living in a relatively peaceful city and middle class saying that she might get shot sounds just like the people living in the city of Buenos Aires afraid of the 2000 murders per year in the metropolitan area. And I also feel that people from Europe or the US think that everywhere in Mexico, Argentina or Latin America as a whole is some kind of hellhole with people wanting to get out at the first chance they get. So maybe my arguments are biased in this respect.

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If you are talking about a massive expansion of violence all over Mexico then I guess that's a possibility and now it would be interesting to know how much has the war expanded in the past 2 or 3 years and especially this year, which seems to be the worst so far. And even if it expanded it would take quite a bit of effort to turn the place into another Ciudad Juarez, though I would guess that most of the violence will still be concentrated near the US border and near the gulf. I mean if the objective of the cartels is to sell the drugs to Europe and the United States those are the best places for it. Maybe that's why your friend is worried about that. I still think that worrying over potential future crime is somewhat strange, but yes, I can mainly speak from my experience.

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Here we had a few month ago a case of a 7 month pregnant woman taking money from the bank and while she was going home she was robbed and shot on purpose on her belly, she went into a coma and the baby obviously died. It was a horrible crime and it was notorious enough to warrant a day or 2 of basically full press coverage if you want, but after 1 week they still kept hammering that story everywhere to the point that people started to believe that pregnant women were regularly being shot at in the country, I had a pregnant friend who actually was worried about the “mass murder of pregnant women” I can understand if they want a couple of days coverage of a notorious murder case, like a pregnant woman's baby being targeted or some murder of a guy commited by his 2 daughters who were apparently worshipping Satan (covered in blood and everything ) or something like that. But when they start covering extensively about some guy shot in a robbery or when they keep on and on for days, weeks or even month about some other murder it creates a false image of “This is likely to happen to you, be very afraid of this, your neighbour can be a serial killer, bla, bla, bla”. This again is obviously from my experience from the national media and the foreign media that I was able to watch for days when I was on vacation.

Again this is my humble opinion not meant to be taken as a fact. Maybe people in Mexico are correct and they should be worried enough for it to greatly affect their lives, or maybe some people from the US are correct in thinking that Mexico is a hellhole. I just don't think people should be THAT worried since I've seen what effect can cause in a person the feeling that they can't even leave their house because they might get robbed or killed and it pains me to see it, and even in Mexico most of the country looks like the Latin American average instead of Ciudad Juarez average.