Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s military campaign against drug cartels has failed miserably. It’s no stretch to call it the single worst human-made disaster in Mexico since the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. While Mexican police records are notoriously unreliable, well over 2500 people a year have been killed in drug-related murders since Calderon began his offensive in 2006. Ciudad Juarez has the highest murder rate of any city in the world.
Calderon, elected president of Mexico in 2006 from the center-right PAN party, made fighting the drug cartels central to his campaign. He claimed the drug cartels were taking over Mexican life and that fighting them is necessary for the survival of the nation.
Calderon is not entirely wrong. Drug cartels have grown significantly in the last two decades. They are a major issue Mexico must face. But launching an all-out war against the cartels without addressing the fundamental economic and social conditions that have allowed for their growth makes little sense and has cost tens of thousands of lives.
The PAN took power in the 2000 elections after Vicente Fox’s historic victory over the PRI candidate. Seven decades of PRI one-party rule after the close of the Mexican Revolution created a corporatist state with little ability to reform itself. The one-party state meant that the PRI found little reason to deal with the poverty that has forever plagued Mexico.
The PAN’s free trade policies have only made poverty worse. Poorly paid police are easily corruptible. Politicians with limited accountability work with the drug cartels to line their own pockets. Many of the impoverished, particularly young men, see the cartels as the best economic opportunity they have. The cartels often provide order and governance that the state does not.
Calderon’s War on Drugs is yet another failure in international attempts to fight against drugs. Calderon’s policies have destabilized the cartels but have by no means reduced their influence, power, or money. The Mexican military has arrested or killed many cartel leaders, but this has not brought down the cartels. Instead, this has opened power vacuums that competing rivals seek to fill by brutally gunning down their opponents.
People have always used drugs and they likely always will. What is legal and illegal has changed over time and is often little more than arbitrary. Historically, attempts to crack down on drugs deemed illegal have almost always failed. The early twentieth century prohibition of alcohol, most famously in the United States, but tried in the Scandinavian countries and Poland as well, was a complete failure. Efforts to crack down on marijuana usage have proven equally quixotic.
The War on Drugs in the United States has been a joke since its inception. For the billions we have spent fighting drug use over the past thirty years, domestic consumption of illegal substances remains steady, enriching foreign drug producers.
In trying to cleanse itself of drugs, the U.S. has exported its War on Drugs around the world. Ronald Reagan began targeting the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia in the 1980s to eradicate cocaine production. But whenever the Americans have cracked down in one country, cartels have moved production to another.
In recent years, success in suppressing coca production in Colombia has led to an upsurge in Peru; meanwhile, Evo Morales rode the backs of his fellow coca producers into the presidency of Bolivia. On top of this we have the failed American attempts to reduce opium farming in Afghanistan.
The War on Drugs in Mexico has fared no better than in the U.S., the Andes, or Afghanistan. Almost every day, Mexican headlines tell of assassinated police chiefs, the discovery of mass graves, and the public display of mutilated corpses. Meanwhile, drug consumption in Mexico, particularly of cocaine, has risen sharply over the past decade.
Much of the Mexican drug violence has to do with the United States. First, our insatiable desire for drugs while declaring them illegal set the stage for the Mexican cartels to make heaps of money. Not only do the Colombians move cocaine through Mexico and not only do the Mexican cartels export tons of marijuana every year, but as Americans have cracked down on crystal methamphetimine production, the cartels have found a new product to peddle in their northern neighbor.
Americans could do two things to help stabilize Mexico. First, it could toughen its gun laws. A majority of the guns in the Mexican gang wars come from the United States. However, the chances of the U.S. making guns more difficult to purchase is zero. The U.S. could also legalize marijuana. But that will only dent the gangs’ profits, not destroy them. The gangs have diversified into kidnapping, the cocaine trade, and other illegal activities. Undermining their marijuana trade will prove more an inconvenience than a death blow.
To be clear, Mexico is far from a failed state. For instance, Brazil has a significantly higher murder rate than Mexico, not to mention nations like Iraq and Afghanistan. But Calderon’s war on the cartels has destabilized the country, leading to an enormous spike in murder rates throughout the country, and creating a sense among many Mexicans that the cartels are more powerful than the state.
How does Mexico put the genie of gang violence back in the bottle? It will be very difficult. A likely PRI victory in the 2012 elections probably means the end of Calderon’s military offensive. Perhaps the PRI makes a backroom deal with the leading drug lords and hopes this reduces the violence, though this is hardly a long-term solution.
With a culture of grotesque public violence, police corruption, and inability of the state to deal with poverty and other social problems, I worry that the drug cartels’ power will continue to grow. Allowing the cartels to operate in peace may actually be the best thing the next president of Mexico can do, given the horrible violence that the drug war has created. Organized crime is bad, but thousands of murders per year are worse.
Alcohol prohibition in the US run from 1919 to 1933
Now google ‘The Great Wall Street Crash’ and see when that happened!
The war on drugs is a tale of a once great and free nation which fell down a rat hole into a fantasy world riddled with peculiar and dystopian logic.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are we willing to foolishly risk our own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
Whether or not any of these ‘at present illegal’ substances are dangerous or addictive is not in contention. Some clearly are and others, such as marijuana, are clearly not. At present we have a bigger ‘prohibition problem’ than we do a ‘drug problem’ This is actually a re-run of the 1920s and early 1930s –Alcohol was rightly perceived to be addictive and dangerous, so they banned it. The result was so catastrophic that the same people who were behind it’s prohibition soon took to the streets to get it legalized/regulated again.
For those of you who are still living in some strange parallel universe, one where prohibition actually works, may I suggest that you return to high school economics class, and learn about supply and DEMAND. Learn that you cannot up DEMAND simply by upping supply. Contrary to popular held superstition, drugs are not PUSHED, the drug dealers are filling a DEMAND not creating one. The DEMAND is here in the US and is impossible to control, but what is possible to control, is the income from that DEMAND. All we have to do is allow legal businesses to meet that DEMAND. Under proper regulation drug use will not rise, as it couldn’t get any worse than it is at present.
If you support prohibition then you’ve helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.
If you support prohibition you’ve a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to escalate Theft, Muggings and Burglaries.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped overcrowd the courts and prisons, thus making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are hurting and terrorizing others.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped evolve local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, controlling vast swaths of territory with significant social and military resources at their disposal.
And one last thought: The real “drug Dons” are the rich and powerful who control the government-licensed drug cartel (Big Pharma). They view people who oppose proper regulation of these unpatentable –thus at present illegal– substances, as “useful idiots”
@Erik
Nice article with well thought out comments. I do wish to point out one fallacy. You said:
“A majority of the guns in the Mexican gang wars come from the United States.”
This is completely false and is pure government propaganda. Please do your own research. Here’s something to get you started. http://bit.ly/c7optj
Think about it… These cartels have well established international distribution routes for any and all products. They have helicopters and even their own submarines. They can get boat loads of weaponry from anywhere in the world.
They use full-auto firearms and grenades. Why would the cartels want to *legally* buy our puny semi-auto firearms one and two at a time?
The propaganda put out by our government – blaming the problems in Mexico to legally purchased firearms in the US – is to eviscerate the 2nd Amendment to our US Constitution.
Please… research this and post a future article on the myth of US guns are causing the problem south of the border.
Thank you.
@Guns Saves Lives
Not that I should even bother engaging in this, but while the cartels can indeed get guns from multiple places and while they certainly get a lot of high-powered guns from the Colombians and other places, the idea that somehow the ease of acquiring weapons in the US doesn’t fuel the violence in Mexico is absurd, dishonest, and is tantamount to accessory to murder. I’m sure you believe that a gun in every hand= the safest society in history, but other than the complete lack of evidence that this is true, the utter irresponsibility of such claims, and the deaths that such mendacity leads to, the evidence is overwhelming that the Mexican cartels rely on loose gun laws in the U.S. to supply much of their arsenals.
this is a decent article, far from perfect but presents good fact. the problem is in the assumptions and faulty use of logic about cause and effect and possible solutions. Any solution present has to deal with all the consequences at once or in a serial fashion. Giving the cartels a back room deal to operate with impunity will not reduce violence, production or consumption it will only defer those for a short period of time and embolden them. Two, applying the simplistic teaching model of supply and demand in regards to the US is absurd and borders on criminal negligence. legalizing drugs will increase demand as well as have a huge negative developmental consequence, just like alcohol has, ever hear of fetal alcohol syndrome, how many deaths are attributed to alcohol related incidence? way more than drug related violence, a completely absurd short sighted solution. Legalizing drugs is going to increase violence by the cartels as their profits go away and production and transportation are taken from their hands, they are not going to find legitimate jobs a s farmers and transporters for ten dollars an hr…. they are going to shift illegal product just like the mafia has and your going to still be fighting violence and a culture of excessive drug use and its economic/ developmental consequences. Enforce the law quit rewarding back room deals and politicians, If you produce or transport or sale drugs you forfeit your life if your a politician and you profit from the process directly you forfeit your life, if you use and manifest behavior that has consequences for other people, you should be institutionalized for rehabilitation and education. if you do it again you forfeit your life, problem solved.