Post by jeffolie on Dec 1, 2008 19:03:58 GMT -6
Mexican war seeps into US
The border between El Paso (population: 600,000) and Juárez (population: 1.5 million) is the most menacing spot along America's southern underbelly. On one side is the second-safest city of its size in the United States (after Honolulu), with only 15 murders so far in 2008. On the other is a slaughterhouse ruled by drug lords where the death toll this year is more than 1,300 and counting. "It's almost beyond belief." Juárez looks a lot like a failed state, with no government entity capable of imposing order and a profusion of powerful organizations that kill and plunder at will. It's as if the United States faced another lawless Waziristan—except this one happens to be right at the nation's doorstep.
But recently the bloodshed has taken on an anarchic quality. The absence of authority has opened the way for hordes of criminal gangs—some of them offshoots of the cartels; others, bands of opportunistic street thugs—to carve out specific rackets, like kidnapping, human trafficking and car theft (more than 1,500 vehicles were reported stolen in October alone). Another burgeoning activity is extortion. Business owners are ordered to pay as much as $2,000 per month in protection money; if they refuse, their establishments are torched with Molotov cocktails. That happens regularly; the city is dotted with shuttered restaurants and clubs still blackened with soot. Juárez "is a lawless territory,"
The cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are full of drug money,
Mexico's infamous drug cartels are becoming so wealthy and so powerful that they could overwhelm the Calderon Administration and Mexican democracy. U.S. drug customers buy '50 to 80 billion dollars a year' worth of illegal drugs from the cartels and their employees and associates.
The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities. Mexican-based trafficking organizations “now have command and control over the drug trade and are starting to show the hallmarks of organized crime, such as organizing into distinct cells with subordinate cells that operate throughout the United States.” Houston has become the top source for firearms going into Mexico to supply drug cartel gangsters with weapons. Mexican officials estimate 90 percent of nearly 27,000 weapons seized from stash houses or recovered from crime scenes in the past two years originated in the United States.
The government revealed that top officials within the army, federal Attorney General's office, and federal police had been allegedly bought off by Mexico's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel. On Thursday, officials said that almost half of Mexican police officers examined this year had failed background and security checks, a figure that rises to nearly 9 of 10 cops in the violent border state of Baja California, home to Tijuana.
Since taking office on Dec. 1, 2006, Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking across Mexico, helping to seize of 70 tons of cocaine and 3,708 tons of marijuana, he said.
Cartels have responded with a bloody terror campaign, dumping beheaded bodies on public streets and tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers in September. More than 4,000 people have died so far this year in drug-related violence.
Mexican cartels are capturing, or trying to capture, the Peruvian market.
www.economicroadmap.com/
The border between El Paso (population: 600,000) and Juárez (population: 1.5 million) is the most menacing spot along America's southern underbelly. On one side is the second-safest city of its size in the United States (after Honolulu), with only 15 murders so far in 2008. On the other is a slaughterhouse ruled by drug lords where the death toll this year is more than 1,300 and counting. "It's almost beyond belief." Juárez looks a lot like a failed state, with no government entity capable of imposing order and a profusion of powerful organizations that kill and plunder at will. It's as if the United States faced another lawless Waziristan—except this one happens to be right at the nation's doorstep.
But recently the bloodshed has taken on an anarchic quality. The absence of authority has opened the way for hordes of criminal gangs—some of them offshoots of the cartels; others, bands of opportunistic street thugs—to carve out specific rackets, like kidnapping, human trafficking and car theft (more than 1,500 vehicles were reported stolen in October alone). Another burgeoning activity is extortion. Business owners are ordered to pay as much as $2,000 per month in protection money; if they refuse, their establishments are torched with Molotov cocktails. That happens regularly; the city is dotted with shuttered restaurants and clubs still blackened with soot. Juárez "is a lawless territory,"
The cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are full of drug money,
Mexico's infamous drug cartels are becoming so wealthy and so powerful that they could overwhelm the Calderon Administration and Mexican democracy. U.S. drug customers buy '50 to 80 billion dollars a year' worth of illegal drugs from the cartels and their employees and associates.
The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities. Mexican-based trafficking organizations “now have command and control over the drug trade and are starting to show the hallmarks of organized crime, such as organizing into distinct cells with subordinate cells that operate throughout the United States.” Houston has become the top source for firearms going into Mexico to supply drug cartel gangsters with weapons. Mexican officials estimate 90 percent of nearly 27,000 weapons seized from stash houses or recovered from crime scenes in the past two years originated in the United States.
The government revealed that top officials within the army, federal Attorney General's office, and federal police had been allegedly bought off by Mexico's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel. On Thursday, officials said that almost half of Mexican police officers examined this year had failed background and security checks, a figure that rises to nearly 9 of 10 cops in the violent border state of Baja California, home to Tijuana.
Since taking office on Dec. 1, 2006, Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking across Mexico, helping to seize of 70 tons of cocaine and 3,708 tons of marijuana, he said.
Cartels have responded with a bloody terror campaign, dumping beheaded bodies on public streets and tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers in September. More than 4,000 people have died so far this year in drug-related violence.
Mexican cartels are capturing, or trying to capture, the Peruvian market.
www.economicroadmap.com/