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Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update--December 2

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr. Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war: Friday, November 27 Twenty-three people were killed in drug-related violence in the state of Chihuahua. Eight of these killings occurred in the capital city of Chihuahua, and 12 occurred in Ciudad Juarez. In Chihuahua, four men and a teenager were killed when the vehicle in which they were traveling was ambushed by a group of gunmen. In another part of the city, an eight-year old boy was killed after being hit by a stray bullet. Among the dead in Ciudad Juarez was a woman who was badly burned after an explosive device went off in the brothel in which she was thought to work. Saturday, November 28 An army officer and six gunmen were killed in two separate gun battles in Zacatecas and Michoacan. In Zacatecas, the army repelled an attack by gunmen, killing five and capturing eight. They also seized five vehicles, weapons, clothing and food. In Michoacan, an army officer was killed after a military convoy was ambushed by gunmen in a hillside community. Two other people were killed in drug-related violence in Michoacan, six in Ciudad Juarez, and one in the greater Mexico City area. Sunday, November 29 At the Calexico, CA border crossing, authorities seized more than 6,000 pounds of marijuana hidden in a shipment of door knobs. Dogs alerted officers to the truck in which more than 458 wrapped packages of marijuana were found. A 30-year old Mexican national was taken into custody. In Tijuana, three men were shot and killed by suspected cartel gunmen wielding AK-47s. The killings came just hours after a firefight between soldiers and drug traffickers at a gas station left one soldier wounded in the foot. In another part of Baja California, six men were arrested on suspicion of being tied to a known drug trafficker, Raydel Lopez Uriarte, aka “El Muletas” (“crutches”). Seven people were killed in Chihuahua , six of whom were killed in Ciudad Juarez. One of the murders occurred just feet from soldiers that were guarding the city’s main plaza, where national security officials were meeting to analyze drug-related violence. In Chiapas, an anti-mining organizer was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle. Mariano Abarca was head of the Mexican Network of Communities Affected by Mining. In Reynosa, police rescued a US citizen that had been kidnapped a week earlier in McAllen, Texas. Raul Alvarado, 36, was forced into a vehicle at gunpoint and taken to a safehouse in Reynosa, where he was bound and beaten. His abductors demanded a ransom of $30,000 and two luxury cars. It is unclear is any ransom was paid. There has been an increase in kidnappings on the US side of the border, most of them linked to illegal activity. Tuesday, December 1 In Mexico City, a protected state witness was gunned down in a Starbucks. Edgar Enrique Bayardo, a former federal policeman, was killed by two gunmen wearing dark suits. His bodyguard was seriously injured in the attack, and a customer at a nearby table was also wounded. Bayardo was arrested last year on suspicion of being employed by the Sinaloa Cartel. Bayardo, whose lavish lifestyle raised suspicion, was made a state witness under the protection of the attorney general’s office. He had apparently been followed by gunmen for several days, and it is unclear why he was not better protected or out in public. Wednesday, December 2 In the Ciudad Juarez area, nine suspected assassins were arrested in an operation carried out by the army. The men are all suspected of working for El Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel and it’s enforcement arm, La Linea. Total Body Count for the Week: 144 Total Body Count for the Year: 6,882

The Difference Between Drug War Violence and "Drug-Related" Violence

This article in the New Hampshire Union Leader gets it right:


Testimony: Drug war behind street shooting

MANCHESTER – Lennoxx Tibbs was shot to death as a result of a drug sellers' turf war, according to police testimony yesterday at probable cause hearings in Manchester District Court for the man accused of shooting Tibbs and the man accused of accompanying him…

Meanwhile, the Herald & Record in Illinois gets it wrong:

Three charged in drug-related shooting

DECATUR - Three Decatur men allegedly involved in a drug deal Thursday that ended in a shooting have been charged in Macon County Circuit Court with five Class X felonies and an assortment of drug charges...

There's been a longstanding and misleading tendency in the press to invoke the term "drug-related" to describe unfortunate events that didn’t even involve drug use, and that's why the Union Leader headline above is such a rare and refreshing example of responsible reporting on drug trade violence.

When you hear the term "alcohol-related," you can be damn sure we're talking about someone doing something reckless & dangerous after getting wasted on booze. Thus, we must also insist that the term "drug-related" be used exclusively to describe incidents arising from the effects of drug consumption, and never the ubiquitous harmful results of drug prohibition itself.

Just imagine if the media properly attributed every episode of horrific drug war violence to prohibition rather than just drugs. That critical distinction is truly the fulcrum from which an individual's view of our drug policy swings in one direction or the other. The instant one learns to identify and distinguish between the harms of drugs and the harms of the laws against them, it becomes vastly more challenging to justify and uphold our present policies.  

So please, the next time you see the term "drug-related" used to described harmful outcomes caused by prohibition, send the reporter a note suggesting that a term like "drug war violence" be used instead. It's just a fact that the drug war kills infinitely more people than all illegal drugs combined, and we should demand media reporting that places the blame squarely where it belongs.

The Weekly Standard Cheers on Mexican Drug War Bloodshed

Jaime Daremblum at The Weekly Standard uses math to prove that Mexico's drug war is getting results:

But despite the continuing violence--in a particularly vicious attack on September 2, 18 people were killed execution style at a Juárez drug-rehabilitation center--Calderón's efforts have not been in vain. A new report from the U.S. State Department observes that "more than 43,000 individuals connected with the major cartels were arrested between December 2006 and February 2009," including senior members of the cartels. Mexican authorities confiscated 4,220 weapons in 2006 and 9,500 a year later; all told, they have seized "more than 27,000 since the beginning of 2008." Since January 2007, they have also confiscated some 65 metric tons of cocaine, nearly 1,250 kilos of methamphetamine, and roughly 4.2 million kilos of marijuana. These achievements are not insignificant.

He's right. These achievements are significant indeed. They got 7,500 people killed last year.

Don't you understand that the exact activities you're rooting for are the reason people are dying? What is so complicated about this? It's a simple formula: more drug war = more death. It's perfectly incoherent to root for arrests and drug seizures, while simultaneously expressing hope that the violence will subside. It doesn't work that way. Anyone struggling with this concept should just pull up a chair and watch what happens next.

How Many Americans Die Every Year in The War on Drugs?

According to Esquire, it may be as many as 15,000. It's awfully hard to calculate with any certainty, but the author's point is to demonstrate that Mexico's frightening drug war death toll isn't the only one worth discussing. Americans are also paying a great price for our disastrous drug policy and it's time to take a closer look at how those numbers add up and how ending the drug war can bring them back down.

Predictably, Mark Kleiman has a problem with the article's pro-legalization angle and expresses his doubts about the 15,000 figure. My question for Kleiman is this: if that number is wrong, then what's the correct number? How should it be calculated? The bottom line here is that people are getting killed constantly in the war on drugs and we're trying to do something about it.

Kleiman hypocritically attacks both sides in the drug war debate for failing to use what he considers "factually and logically sound arguments," while simultaneously insisting – without any proof -- that legalization will create catastrophic spikes in drug use. He could be right, but we don’t really have any way to find out other than by doing exactly what he says we shouldn’t do. Personally, my gut instinct is that Kleiman is partially right, but that the benefits of reducing the collective harms of prohibition will decisively outweigh the new harms he anticipates. Again, there's only one way to find out.

Moreover, it's just crazy to accept the current body count based on the assumption that alternatives can't possibly work. LEAP's Neill Franklin nails this point:

But what about the argument that drugs will spread like wildfire if we don't keep bringing down the hammer?

"First, there's no concrete study to support such a belief — it's all completely speculation," Franklin insists. "So in my left hand I have all this speculation about what may happen to addiction rates, and then I look at my other hand and I see all these dead bodies that are actually fact, not speculation. And you're going to ask me to weigh the two? Second, if the addiction rate does go up, I'm going to have a lot of live addicts that I can cure. The direction we're going in now, I've got a lot of dead bodies."

Regardless of how legalization might impact addiction rates, it's just a fact that people are presently getting shot to death over drugs on a daily basis. If you think it has to be that way, you're wrong. People do not have to be murdered in the streets constantly. We can change that, we really can, and then we can do some more number crunching and decide if regulating drug sales is worth it or not.

The Mexican Drug War is Losing Public Support

In a report on the latest massacre of federal police in Mexico, the Los Angeles Times points out that the Mexican people seem to be losing faith in President Calderon's escalated campaign against the cartels:

"We cannot, we should not, we will not take one step backward in this matter," Calderon said Tuesday.

Mexicans seem skeptical. In a new poll, more than half of respondents said they believe the government is losing the war. Only 28% said it is winning, according to the survey, published Tuesday in the daily Milenio newspaper.

That frustration is becoming a big problem for Calderon:

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon suffered a setback in midterm elections yesterday when the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party unseated his party as the largest force in Mexico’s fractured Congress in a vote that turned on the global economic crisis and the government’s crackdown on drug traffickers. [Boston Globe]

And it's only going to get worse. Calderon's crackdown has produced the opposite of its intended effect, which is exactly what one should always expect from aggressive tactics in the war on drugs. Violence and corruption will only continue to escalate and Calderon will inevitably be fighting for re-election amidst daily episodes of horrific street violence brought about by his own policies.

Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox is now advocating discussion about legalizing drugs and it's probably just a matter of time before that debate becomes the central question in Mexican politics.

Obama Compares Drug War to Alcohol Prohibition

Via NORML's Russ Belville, CBS's Bob Schieffer asked President Obama about the drug war violence in Mexico and got this surprising response:

President Obama:  Well, what’s happened is that President Calderon I think has been very bold and rightly has decided that it’s gotten carried away. The drug cartels have too much power, are undermining and corrupting huge segments of Mexican society. And so he has taken them on in the same way that when, you know, Elliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition, oftentimes that causes even more violence. And we’re seeing that flare up.

I honestly cannot believe the president is looking towards alcohol prohibition for a little perspective on our present predicament. Everyone knows that story. Elliot Ness didn't defeat those cartels. Legalization defeated them.

If You Hate Gun Control, You Can Thank the Drug War for Causing it


Escalating drug war violence in Mexico has brought recent attention to the fact that the cartels are often armed with American guns. The border is really a two-way street, with drugs moving north while cash and weaponry travel south. Here's Mexican President Felipe Calderon claiming that over 90% of the cartels' firepower comes from the U.S.



U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has proposed re-implementing the assault weapons ban and discussions are under way about what else can be done to curb the flow of American weaponry across our southern border. Naturally, opponents of gun control are concerned. The popular right-wing blog NewsBusters has a post criticizing media coverage of the issue, arguing that recent statements regarding the role of U.S. weapons in facilitating Mexican drug war violence have been widely exaggerated. The conclusion caught my eye:
Gun control doesn't work to stop crime. Just look at places that have very strict gun regulation. Like ... Mexico.
Just replace "gun control/regulation" with "drug prohibition" and you've solved the riddle of why conditions in Mexico continue to deteriorate. Of course, while the NewsBusters site is overflowing with gun rights advocacy, discussion of drug policy is nowhere to be found, save for an occasional jab at the pro-pot liberal media. It never ceases to amaze me that some people actually believe enjoying guns is a personal choice, but enjoying marijuana is not.

So let me spell it out: the drug war is a huge reason the new administration is looking at the gun issue. Drug prohibition has created a bloodbath in Mexico that is now spilling across our southern border. The problem is getting worse because our strategy of fighting it out with the cartels just causes more crime and violence.

Marijuana prohibition alone plays a staggering role in funding the drug war violence that may soon result in new domestic gun control measures, yet NewsBusters has repeatedly criticized the discussion of reforming marijuana laws. The bottom line is that if you oppose gun control while simultaneously supporting a prohibitionist drug policy that increases gun violence and prompts calls for regulation, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Mexican President Surprised to Learn That the Drug War is Super Violent

Does Felipe Calderon even know what he's doing?

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — President Felipe Calderon Friday acknowledged the country's drug war is bloodier and tougher than he thought when he first took office in 2006, but vowed to eradicate the "cancer" that is consuming Mexico.

Really? That's odd because this has gone exactly as I expected and I haven’t been to Mexico in 20 years. He's the president. Why is he struggling to understand the basic dimensions of his own drug war?

If he admits that he didn't know it would get this bad, one wonders what else he doesn’t know. There were 6,000 people killed in Mexico's drug war last year alone and things appear to be getting worse, not better. Even Calderon's updated assessment may be proven horribly naïve.  

How much longer can the leaders of the drug war continue feigning surprise when their policies fail?

Drug War Logic 101

Pete Guither and Dave Borden already mentioned it, but I just can’t get enough of this quote from the Wall Street Journal:

"If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence "because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."

So let me get this straight. According to the U.S. government:

No violence = drug war is failing
Intense violence = drug war is going well

So when do we win the drug war then? When everyone’s dead?

Increasing Violence in Mexico is Not a Sign of Progress in the Drug War

Peter Guither routinely dissects drug war illogic in the public discourse over at the Drug WarRant blog. Last week he highlighted some illustratively blind comments in the Wall Street Journal by an unnamed senior US official who actually argued that increased violence in Mexico is a sign of progress in the drug war:
U.S. law-enforcement officials -- as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico -- say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing. "If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence," a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence "because these guys are flailing. We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."
The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb followed up:
The cops wanted a new metric by which to judge their success -- one that would not penalize them for an increased murder rate that necessarily follows from doing their job, i.e. eliminating a major drug trafficker.
Pete pointed out that Goldfarb and the official are "confusing success in an action with success in policy." Sure, we can take out any given drug trafficking organization if we try hard enough, but if the result is that different traffickers supply the same amount of drugs to people, while tearing the country apart at greater and greater levels with their fighting, it's poor strategy. And since people are dying in the Mexican drug wars at a rapid pace -- 8,000 have been killed in the past two years since President Calderón ratcheted things up by sending in the military -- I'd say yes, we absolutely should stop it, ASAP. If we're going to be at all logical about things, that is.
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