Nuevo Laredo: Martial Law as Media Stunt in the Failed War on Drugs

I spoke too soon when I wrote that "not one" of the Commercial Media reporters had questioned the underlying, systemic, causes of all this violence and circus. Your link to Tracey Eaton's story shows that one indeed has. Eaton writes:

U.S.-MEXICO BORDER – Since the 1970s, Mexican authorities have periodically launched splashy anti-drug operations like the one now being carried out in Nuevo Laredo and 13 other cities.

But these high-profile raids – often involving hundreds of federal agents and soldiers – have had virtually no long-term impact, drug-trade specialists say.

"The whole history of anti-drug sweeps in Mexico is that eventually the sweepers get converted," said Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River and other acclaimed books about the drug business. "They join the traffickers. Nothing changes except there are more drugs – and they're cheaper."

Mexico's anti-drug operations usually produce short-term results. Gang members and mafia soldiers are jailed. Drugs are seized. And homes, businesses and shiny cars owned by the traffickers are confiscated.

But experts say the government's efforts – such as the show of force on Sunday and Monday following the assassination last week of Nuevo Laredo's new police chief – barely make a dent in what's become a multibillion-dollar industry.

Don Henry Ford, author of Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy, said Mexico's drug economy has multiplied since the 1980s, when he smuggled marijuana.
"The money is just too big now," he said. "There's no way the government's going to stop it. And they can't afford to. If all that money were to dry up, it would literally cause a wave of people trying to get out of there. It would break the nation."

Complicating matters: Many of those in law enforcement are corrupt, he said.

After the Mexican army raided his marijuana plantation in the 1980s, he said, soldiers forced the field workers to finish packaging the drugs so they'd have an easier time reselling it later...

One of the first high-profile drug sweeps in Mexico was Operation Condor, which lasted from 1975 to 1985.

Some 10,000 soldiers under the command of Mexican Gen. José Hernández Toledo were sent to Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua states to destroy the drug crops there.

Gen. Hernández "predicted the end of drug trafficking in six months," Mexican sociologist Luis Astorga said. But he failed. Peasants terrified of the soldiers fled to other states along with many of the traffickers.

The drug trade spread. Prices in the U.S. went up temporarily, but the flow of marijuana and other drugs into Texas and other states continued unabated.

Carlos Aguilar Garza, the attorney general's front man during Operation Condor, "became a drug trafficker himself years later and was assassinated in 1993," Mr. Astorga said.

"Hundreds of people were arrested, tortured and sent to jail" during Operation Condor, "but not a single big boss" was among them, Mr. Astorga said. And by the time it was over, most of the drug lords moved to Guadalajara and "continued their business on a bigger scale."

Hoping to get trafficking under control, the Mexican government named a general to head the top anti-drug agency.

Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo carried out a crackdown of his own until he was arrested in February 1997 and charged with protecting the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, then the country's top trafficker...

Since then, things have only gotten worse, drug-trade experts say.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has driven many legitimate Mexican farmers out of business, and many have turned to drug cultivation, Mr. Bowden said. "It's one of the unintended consequences of NAFTA," Mr. Bowden said...

Despite key arrests, experts say making meaningful progress remains an uphill battle because illicit drugs have become such an important part of the Mexican economy. Said (former DEA agent Cele) Castillo: "We are more addicted to drug money than we are to drugs."

Now, that's journalism! Hats off to Tracey Eaton of the Dallas Morning News for going against the tide of lazy official reporting.

We apparently have to restate a theme common on the pages of Narco News, that the violence of the drug war will only stop with the end of the drug war and drug consumption will never be eliminated by violent prohibition.  More from the article Don Henry quoted:

Law enforcement officials trace the current violence to the Fox administration's arrests of 15 leaders of billion-dollar criminal organizations. Rivals have tried to move in and violently take over their territory. There have also been bloody battles within cartels, as lieutenants fight to move up the ladder because of new vacancies at the top, Mexican officials said.

Officials in Washington have continually praised the efforts of Fox, noting he has jailed more top cartel leaders than any Mexican president in history.  Since he took office, the Mexican government has arrested more than 46,000 people on drug charges, destroyed numerous clandestine landing strips and wiped out thousands of acres of poppy and marijuana fields.

And while no one quoted in the article is calling for the end of drug prohibition, some are connecting the dots:

A number of analysts have begun pointing out that Fox's much-applauded effort against drug traffickers has not reduced the supply of drugs reaching U.S. streets from Mexico. Instead, they said, all Mexico has gotten for its effort is more violence and a rapidly rising drug consumption problem.

"The good news is that there are more capos in jail; the bad news is that it doesn't change anything," said Jorge Chabat, an academic who studies justice issues. "There's no change in the amount of drugs available on the street, and you have more violence. The logical question is, 'What are we doing this for?'"

And the final reason sustained militarized police state attack on drug production and distribution "doesn't change anything" in Mexico OR the United States (where the violence from the drug war is worse and more indiscriminate if less showy at the moment) is almost impossible to ignore once lame-duck Presidente Vicente Fox says it: the illegal drug industry controls "millions and millions and millions of dollars," and politicians and authorities on both sides of the border undoubtedly get a piece.