AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Mexicos beach wars4/17/2024 ![]() US culpability doesn’t make the Mexican government innocent. And American weapons and drug money laundered by big-name banks continue flowing south into Mexico. But the US has managed to stay righteous while quenching its thirst for cocaine and other drugs. The war is thus a Mexican-American problem. In the first two years of Calderón’s successor Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, the army accumulated 2,212 complaints – 541 more than those lodged against the military in Calderón’s first two years. ![]() Under Calderón, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission saw a significant increase in citizen complaints of abuse. In Mexico, the armed forces have been turned against the Mexican people, and have gradually established a record of violating human rights. The American government has consistently encouraged Latin American governments to use weapons of war to fight drugs (a role the US military cannot legally play at home).Įnrique Peña Nieto has continued his precedessor’s cartel policy – he just talks about it less. That amount includes the Mérida Initiative, a security-based aid agreement that included special aircraft and training for pilots to confront cartels from the air. Mexico has spent at least $54 billion on security and defence, with US donations of at least $1.5 billion. Since then, both the US and Mexico have fought that war, at great cost. The term “War on Drugs” came into common usage after American president Richard Nixon established the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 to conduct “ an all-out global war on the drug menace.” Mexico’s drug war actually predates Calderón. In 2015, Border Patrol seized more than 2 million pounds of all sorts of drugs. Between 20, the height of Calderón’s war, the US Border Patrol seized 13.2 million pounds of marijuana. It’s little surprise the Marines are the favoured military force in fighting the drug war.ĭespite this violent law enforcement, drugs have continued the steady flow north to the United States, the world’s largest consumer of cocaine 84% of that cocaine enters via the Mexican border. In 2014, the army killed 168 civilians and injured 23 (deadliness ratio: 7.3), while the Marines injured 1 and killed 74 (deadliness ratio: 74). Researchers at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica have found that in Mexico the deadliness ratio – that is, the proportion of civilians injured compared those killed – is alarmingly high. By 2012, Mexico’s homicide rate was among the world’s highest, at 21 per 100,000. ![]() The death toll far exceeds the 103,000 civilians killed in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq between 20. Many victims of this decade of murder and grief have been unheralded, but some have made the headlines: 22 civilians summarily executed by the army in Tlatlaya, 43 students who disappeared without a trace in Ayotzinapa in 2014.Ī woman reacts to a massacre perpetrated by the Gulf Cartel. 150,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war since 2006, and another 30,000 are missing. It is time to ask: what has the decade-long cartel strategy achieved? Another failed American warĪs one must when assessing war, let’s start with the casualties. Today, Mexico’s drug war rages on, virtually unchanged. He also asked Mexicans for patience, cautioning that the fight would take time.Īll this was exactly ten years ago. Its aim, according to minister of the interior Francisco Ramírez Acuña, was to “take back” a country that had been “seized” by organised crime. On December 11, 2006, days after taking office, Calderón launched the “ Operativo Conjunto Michoacán” – Operation Michoacán – sending some 6,500 soldiers, marines and federal police to the state. ![]() His campaign presented him as the only honest alternative to the PRI’s corrupt legacy. Calderón would be only the second Mexican leader who did not hail from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which had ruled for most of the 20th century. A few weeks before the Mexico’s 2006 election, La Familia Michoacana - among the most vicious of Mexico’s major drug cartels – tossed five severed heads onto the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra night club in Uruapan, Michoacán, along with a message outlining its strategy for targeted killings, which it called “divine justice”.Īs this gruesome incident rekindled the debate on national security, candidate Felipe Calderón, who went on to win the election, made a campaign promise: to fix the country’s drug problem.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |