The Mexican Border Drug Wars

[??????????]

Would Washington DC consider legalizing certain drugs if all the violence that is going on in over the border was happening in the NY, NJ, PA metro area?

[dead0man]

No, they'd just blow more money trying to enforce prohibition.

[Franzl]

No, they'd just blow more money trying to enforce prohibition.

Probably, yeah.

[patrick1]

Would Washington DC consider legalizing certain drugs if all the violence that is going on in over the border was happening in the NY, NJ, PA metro area?

Were you watching too many cartoons during the 80's and early 90's   There were 2,200 murders in NY in 1990 alone. DC, Philly and Baltimore were as bad or even worse and there was no movement on legalization.

I think there is a very slow movement toward some legalization and realization that the Mr Mackey  approach to drugs is misguided.

[??????????]

Mexico has had 28k in one year alone. The US has never had beheadings, mass murder of police, etc like Mexico. If the US had the same exact things going on something would change.

[patrick1]

Mexico has had 28k in one year alone. The US has never had beheadings, mass murder of police, etc like Mexico. If the US had the same exact things going on something would change.

It is less than half that number per year. 28K have been killed in the drug war over a four year period.   I think out of all murders- drugs and otherwise the number is around 13k. This puts it right around the US rate in 1990 when we had around 29k murders. I dont mean to minimize the problem- some cities in Mexico (Juarez) are just pure terrible, however, large parts are calm.

edit- it is prob closer to 15k now.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I doubt it. That even had little influence in repealing Prohibition, that just happened because people themselves were pissed off they couldn't drink and all wanted to.

[??????????]

I doubt it. That even had little influence in repealing Prohibition, that just happened because people themselves were pissed off they couldn't drink and all wanted to.

So Americans wouldn't raise holy hell if kindergartens were burned down by thugs because people wouldn't pay them off? Especially in this day and age of information. Back in prohibition days it was easier, much easier, to cover up crime waves. Now if you had the kind of kidnappings, murders, etc going on in a concentrated, but spread out, part of the US, the citizenry would want something done about the problem.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

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.

[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.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

As I said she wasn't the kind to exaggerate, and unless things are extremely biased in different media, seems there is slightly more problems in Mexico nowadays than in the rest of Latin America. Both in term of numbers of crimes than in term of the horror of the crimes committed.

[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.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

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.

I precisely described the way this girl was before telling the kind of things she told me, precisely because such a person who doesn't complain and who almost felt desperately amused of how fragile life could be for her, might well tell in which situation people can live here. But maybe she was in an area with biggest problems than other cities in Mexico, which the discussion we had didn't permit me to really know.

In my original post I said that I was aware that there certainly was areas in which most of the problems were located, but aside from the fact these places are located in different places all along the state of Mexico which kinda makes the whole country concerned with that, I don't know, maybe a drug war, a shooting, can possibly happen here or there, even if not often or of lesser intensity, if that's effectively how it can happen, then some fear is legitimate. I mean it's not because there are only few massive crimes areas than we can necessarily feel the rest is ok, in fact seems that we would all need a precise account on how it happens in Mexico before stating, in one way or an other.

In France too, criminality increases and becomes more and more violent, but it's far to be Mexico, and a kalashnikov shooting because of a 'drug war' will make headlines of evening news if there is a murder, I know media can easily do too much and then people will easily feel there is troubles everywhere, but beyond this, just watching the facts, at least the collection I heard of, in terms of number and of violence of the crimes seems people in Mexico can legitimately worry.

[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.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

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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.

Well, yes, according to what she told me I spotted her rather upper middle class, and in a city 2 hours down the US border, not sure about the name 'San Pedro' maybe, was a long time ago this year. And the fact that it was really not the kind to complain about that, and really not the kind to expand her on that either, it's just that the conversation led us to have a debate about the attitude of the Mexican society on this topic, which took us to speak about the importance of religion and on and on, and after a tough debate in which I was kinda blaming some things in the Mexican society, she went like that. According to what she told me during this long conversation about her city it seemed to me an 'average city', but yes, maybe I assumed too much. I can only guarantee that girl was not the kind to complain or to enjoy to say that everything is bad and awful, more likely the opposite, she had a kind of light elegance which prefers to focus on what's beautiful.

But, beyond this personal case, on which you can't base an analysis yes, it's just a concrete example, yes, I don't mean average Mexico is average Ciudad Juarez, but all things that can happen even if mainly in a few different parts of the country can imo legitimately worry Mexicans about what's happening in their country. And well I know civilians are not the 1st targets but they can be touched anytime apparently according to how crimes are committed (some public shootings between gangs, some blind ones amongst some groups of civilians, some cars blown-up, I seem to remind an awful stuff about immigrants too, but I really don't have the mind to look further through it right now). And anyhow, one more time, seems nobody here really has a clue abut the situation for the 'average Mexico'.

But beyond the fact that Mexicans should worry or not, I mainly intervened here to say that, no matter how could have been other situations in the past and in other places of the world,  according to what seems to happen there in term of proportions and characterization of crimes we can maybe legitimately say that the situation is kinda exceptional in Mexico nowadays, and if maybe not all over the country, it's not only a matter of Juarez either apparently even if that one would be the harshest, several different spots in the country have made some bad news.

And, as to the topic originally at hand. Making people legalize it because of massive crimes? Not sure, it would take an over-brave and over-strong politician to do that. Fear make people securitarists, not open-minded to new schemes.

[ag]

As I said she wasn't the kind to exaggerate, and unless things are extremely biased in different media, seems there is slightly more problems in Mexico nowadays than in the rest of Latin America. Both in term of numbers of crimes than in term of the horror of the crimes committed.

Not really. It's just that Mexico is closer to the US and that Mexico used to be fairly safe. Just today I talked to a Salvadorean guy who said: "well, whatever there was yesterday on the news about Morelia (actual street battles between the gov't and the narcorebels) - we hear it on the news ever 3-4 days. " Caracas, reportedly (nobody really knows - not even the Chavez government), has the murder rate higher than Ciudad Juarez (nothing to do w/ drugs - just general disintegration for law and order).  Though there are some areas in Mexico City (e.g. Tepito) where police generally are afraid to enter, these are relatively few - it's hard to imagine a battle of the scale of the recent Rio events.

Still, of course, Mexico does have a lot of problems.

[fezzyfestoon]

Would Washington DC consider legalizing certain drugs if all the violence that is going on in over the border was happening in the NY, NJ, PA metro area?

Not a chance.  If anything it'd be less likely.  The way it is at least some conservatives on the front line see the benefits of legalization.  If the issue were only prevalent to those in more liberal areas, only the people that more often support it already would.

[patrick1]

Statistical bump.  Man, Juarez has had 3,000 drug murders this year. I dont blame people for getting out of Dodge.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12012425

[Frodo]

I wasn't sure whether I should start a new thread or not, but this seems an appropriate place for the article I want to post.  And what especially drew my attention was the author's assertion that even if drugs were legalized and made subject to government regulation and taxation, it would not stop the violence in northern Mexico (and areas further south) since the drug cartels have 'diversified their portfolio' -so to speak- into including prostitution, kidnappings, extortion, etc.  

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

While it would not stop the violence overnight, drug legalization would seriously weaken the drug cartels by sharply reducing the flow of money.  To a lesser degree legalization of prostitution would also help, but not as much since the legalization of prostitution would unfortunately not be enough to eliminate sex slavery.