Mexico

[Gerry Clinchy]

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/wo...ed=1&th&emc=th

The whole issue of illegal immigration from Mexico is an issue that goes much deeper into the problems that afflict Mexico.

Possibly the most general term one could use is "lawlessness" ... corruption in government, the power of drug gangs, the loss of faith of the citizens that their police can protect them from violence.

Several mayors here in northeastern Mexico now spend the night in the United States out of concern that the local police cannot protect them, state officials confirmed.

Until now, Mr. Calderón’s main approach has been to draw on the military and the federal police, but the strategy has come under withering criticism for its human rights record. The State Department withheld funds from Mexico under an antidrug initiative for the first time this year partly because of abuses.

It would also seem that in the highest levels of our own government, there is confusion over how to handle the problems in Mexico that spill over the border to endanger US citizens:

“This a matter in which we need to rebuild our own institutions,” he said, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the fight against traffickers here was taking on the characteristics of an “insurgency,” angering Mexican officials. President Obama contradicted her the next day.

Here in Santiago, the police force has dwindled to about 20 from 160 a year ago, with state and federal police filling the gap, according to the mayor, Bladimiro Montalvo. Residents like Gonzalo Almaguer, a 62-year-old retiree, say they hardly go out anymore, especially at night. “This was a peaceful town but now you don’t know who to trust; it is like the rest of the country,” said Mr. Almaguer, one of the few people in the central plaza last week.

Mayor Montalvo said he worried most about the 50 percent drop in tourism because of the swelling violence around his town, including shootings and kidnappings in nearby Monterrey that prompted the State Department to pull children of its workers out of the country.

“I don’t think so,” he said when asked if he worried for his safety. “Something can happen, but if you are orderly and respectful that is something they will respect,” he said of criminal organizations. He then dashed off, driven away in a sport utility vehicle by two bodyguards.

So, the mayor advocates being respectful to the drug gangs in order to preserve a citizen's safety? Survival is contingent upon earning the respect of thugs?

If there was ever reason to have great appreciation and respect for "an honest cop", Mexico surely gives us a good reason.

Is the only answer really to close that border? Let them fight it out & see what happens? Will the drug gangs win? It would appear that unless the govt cleans up its own act, the citizens don't have much choice between a corrupt govt or gangs of thugs.

Perhaps there is also a lesson here for the US ... when we turn our heads to corrupt govt officials we are asking for trouble. Is that how thugs came to control Mexico?

[Hew]

Perhaps there is also a lesson here for the US ... when we turn our heads to corrupt govt officials we are asking for trouble. Is that how thugs came to control Mexico?

Thugs have had their foot on Mexico's throat well before drug cartels...it's just that they wore suits and had official-sounding names like "president," 'govenor," "mayor," "general," and "dog catcher."

Given Mexico's geography, natural resources and hard-working, entrepeneurial people we would be cuttting their yards and cleaning their pools if not for the rampant, centuries-old corruption there.

[Ken Bora]

....

Is the only answer really to close that border? Let them fight it out & see what happens??

no,
we could invade them.

[david gibson]

its a failed state. virtually no middle class, and the upper class is corrupt. when cops make $10 a day they are easily swayed.

the violence will spread and eventually i bet we will at least invade their border states. my be 5, 10, 20 yrs, but it will happen.

just look at what happened last week at Falcon reservoir. we need to militarize that border now. undercover investigations show far more stuff coming over the border than our govt. admits. even the other direction, they stopped a bus last week going to mexico with over $3 million in cash

[subroc]

...the violence will spread and eventually i bet we will at least invade their border states. my be 5, 10, 20 yrs, but it will happen...

well, we may invade Mexico at some point in the future, but, they are invading the United States now!

[Gerry Clinchy]

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/us...html?th&emc=th

The location is Nogales, (TX and Mexico). The issue is tunnels dug primarily for drug smuggling ...

It is not just the flow of drugs that concerns the authorities here. The tunneling weakens roadways, sometimes causing them to buckle, and puts buildings at risk.
“There is a joke in Nogales that someday its entire downtown will collapse into a giant sinkhole due to the many drug tunnels in the city,” Hugh Holub, a former public works director in Nogales, wrote recently.

Not sure if I should introduce this into this thread, but ... it's been suggested that if drugs were legalized in the US (& elsewhere) the cartels would be out of business.

Not so sure about that ... since the cartels already have the supplier connections, why wouldn't they simply don suits and ties and become the legal suppliers? They could used their established thuggery tactics to prevent others from harming their market share & run for office and actually become the govt (if they aren't already, that is.)

I don't particularly think that legalizing all drugs would eliminate crime. Alcohol and tobacco are legal here, but there is still crime associated with both as related to avoiding taxes on those items. Has gambling legalization eliminated the numbers runners? There's always something new to smuggle & create a black market for.

I think that one of the keys to revoking Prohibition was that there had always been legal suppliers for alcohol before the law. Responsible alcohol usage had always been socially acceptable prior to Prohibition. Is there any way to use cocaine that is "responsible"? (I use cocaine as an example since its addictive capacity is high.) In order to rule out the criminal element, would it mean legalizing ALL drugs? If not all drugs were legalized, then there would still be a "niche" for the criminal elements.

Alcohol is addictive as well, but my sense is that only a relatively small portion of a general population is sensitive to alcohol addiction. Certainly, tobacco is addictive (and highly so). The difference between alcohol & drugs v. tobacco is that generally tobacco is not intoxicating.