Mexico drug war

Two very good articles saying that 1) NAFTA pushed Mexican farmers to northern Mexico, but then they lost their jobs when China and India became the places to send your manufacturing, so then the unemployed Mexicans started participating in the drug trade for the drug cartels. Also, up to 2000 the PRI sort of arbitrated between the cartels and everybody took in a cut from the drug trade; after 2000 the PAN chose to stop arbitrating between the cartels, which by that time had made a lot of money due to NAFTA which allowed drugs to be traded across the US border more easily; so the war between cartels exploded. 2) the US is funding the Mexican military to supposedly eliminate drug cartels, whereas in fact the Mexican military is taking sides with some cartels to fight other cartels:


Behind Mexico's Bloodshed.
The Real News. September 1, 2010

Bruce Livesey: While free trade wiped out Mexico's traditional agriculture, the drug cartels moved in.

Flourishing drug demand in the U.S. and Canada has combined with the destruction of Mexico's traditional economy to increase the power of the Mexican drug cartels. At the same time, the cartels are at war over the drug market in Mexico, with drastic results including the recent massacre of 72 undocumented migrants in Northern Mexico.

Bio

Bruce Livesey has been a journalist for more than 25 years, most recently focusing his attention on the drug war in Mexico where he produced radio pieces for NPR and CBC radio. He previously worked as a television producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs program CBC News Sunday which followed six years at the CBC program the fifth estate as an associate producer where he worked on stories involving, among others, George W. Bush's connections to the bin Laden family, the failings of the Patriot missile, Canada's most powerful mobsters, and an examination of the rise of Islamist terrorism in Europe as part of a co-production with the PBS program Frontline and the New York Times. He has written for over 30 newspapers and magazines and produced television stories for Al-Jazeera English and Current TV.
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Transcript

JESSE FREESTON, PRODUCER, TRNN: The discovery of 72 murdered migrants on a ranch in northern Mexico last week has brought more attention to the violence in a country in the grips of a war between competing drug cartels. I spoke with investigative journalist Bruce Livesey, who recently returned from Ciudad Juárez on Mexico's northern border, where he produced reports for NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

FREESTON: I think, Bruce, a lot of people are aware of the violence in Mexico, but not all of us really understand it and what's at the roots of it. And sort of that was what compelled your journey there. Could you tell us a little bit about what you found?

BRUCE LIVESAY, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: It's a somewhat complicated story, in the sense that it's very much rooted in the history of Mexico, in sort of the past and recent times. And, essentially, in a nutshell, up until about 2000 the arrangement in Mexico was that the Mexican state and government and the political party at the time, which was the PRI, and the cartels sort of worked all in this kind of tango of corruption together. And so drugs could pass through Mexico, and everybody got a bit of money out of it, and the role of the state was to sort of manage and be a referee among the cartels. And what changed was in 2000 the PRI fell from power, and essentially PAN came to power on an anticorruption platform. So they essentially didn't want to be the referee among the cartels any longer. And what that led to was that in this sort of vacuum of power, the cartels began to compete with each other openly for each other's marketplace. Really it was through, I'd say, from about 2000 to 2006, the violence among the cartels began to grow as they began to sort of jostle for market share. I think the other thing that was very critical in this was NAFTA, and NAFTA played a role in two ways. In the early 1990s, the Americans were very successful in preventing, stopping sort of the flow of drugs to Florida from Columbia, especially cocaine. And what this did was that it forced the Colombians to think of another route of the drugs into the North American market, and they essentially cut a deal with the Mexican drug cartels to start transporting the drugs through Mexico. And when NAFTA came into effect in the early '90s, this made it much easier, 'cause the flow of trucks across the border increased enormously. And they began throwing shipments of heroin, crystal meth, and marijuana in with these shipments of cocaine, and it made them suddenly much more wealthier. Their portion of controlling the American market place grew enormously. So most of the drugs now entering the United States come through Mexico. So you had this combination of where the Mexican drug cartels got wealthier, the government stopped playing this role of being the referee. And what always happens in the world of organized crime, when you have no sort of regulation, is that-and it's generally a world that attracts the most ruthless aspect of the population-is you end up with a lot of people killing each other. And that's really sort of at-in an overview, what's been happening.

FREESTON: It hasn't just brought in maybe the most ruthless aspects as well. It's also brought in normal people who've sort of been left between a rock and a hard place. And maybe talk about NAFTA and some of the other aspects of the transformation of the Mexican economy.

LIVESAY: One thing that occurred with NAFTA was it allowed American produce, you know, especially, you know, agricultural produce, into the Mexican market. And essentially the Americans, their produce was cheaper and better than the Mexicans'. So essentially what that did is it wiped out the Mexican agricultural sector to a great extent. So a lot of the small farmers in central Mexico who were just, you know, barely getting by suddenly were out of work, and they essentially migrated north to cities like Juárez, where factories had been set up, in the maquiladoras, and to take advantage of, you know, free trade, essentially to exploit Mexican workers and produce goods for the American market. And so you saw Juárez in the sort of late '90s, early 2000s actually become a prosperous city-you know, a lot more investment there and a large growth in population. Well, then a couple of things happened. One is that a lot of those jobs vanished when suddenly China and India became the place to be, to send your manufacturing. So you had now this displaced population in northern Mexico who couldn't go back to the land to make a living because they couldn't compete with American produce, and increasingly their only economic opportunity was the drug trade. This was essentially dealing in narcotics. So they became employees of the drug cartels. And that-so now you have a significant portion of the Mexican population that is involved somehow, either directly or indirectly involved, in the drug trade. It is now considered the second biggest export and industry in Mexico is the drug trade, after oil production.

FREESTON: So 2006, Felipe Calderón comes to power in what could best be described as a controversial election. Then what happens?

LIVESAY: Many believe that in order to sort of put a stamp of legitimacy on his government that, as you say, got elected under questionable circumstances, he decides to act like the macho man and send the army into-primarily in northern Mexico, into the towns and villages and cities, in order to ostensibly take on the drug cartels. And they will say, we're taking on all the drug cartels. So the problem was that Calderón doesn't really control the state. He doesn't-the state has become so corrupted over the decades that it's easily manipulated by other forces in Mexico. He also-he failed to recognize-or perhaps he did know this, but the upshot was the Mexican army has long played a role in the drug trade, going back 100 years. In the mid-'90s, one of the most famous arrests was the drug czar in Mexico who was also a Mexican military general. And he was in bed with the Juárez cartel, so that the Mexican Army has this long history of corruption with the drug trade. So, essentially, Calderón was sending in a force that he didn't really control. And what essentially has happened is the Mexican army got easily corrupted and manipulated by the drug trade, and especially by the drug cartels. So now what's happened is that the army has taken sides in the war among the cartels.

FREESTON: I'm just going to-we're going to end this segment here. And in the next segment we'll talk about specifically how that relationship plays out and what you saw in Ciudad Juárez, if you join us for part two of our interview with Bruce Livesey.


BEHIND MEXICO'S BLOODSHED Pt. 2.
The Real News. September 3, 2010

In part two of our interview with investigative journalist Bruce Livesey, we discuss the violence in Ciudad Juarez. Livesey, recently returned from Mexico's murder capital, says that the Mexican military is showing evidence that it is supporting the Sinaloa Cartel in it's bid to take out the local Juarez Cartel for this key transportation corridor.

Bio

Bruce Livesey has been a journalist for more than 25 years, most recently focusing his attention on the drug war in Mexico where he produced radio pieces for NPR and CBC radio. He previously worked as a television producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs program CBC News Sunday which followed six years at the CBC program the fifth estate as an associate producer where he worked on stories involving, among others, George W. Bush's connections to the bin Laden family, the failings of the Patriot missile, Canada's most powerful mobsters, and an examination of the rise of Islamist terrorism in Europe as part of a co-production with the PBS program Frontline and the New York Times. He has written for over 30 newspapers and magazines and produced television stories for Al-Jazeera English and Current TV.

Transcript

JESSE FREESTON, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Jesse Freeston in Toronto with Bruce Livesey, who recently returned from Ciudad Juárez, which is one of the epicenters, really, of this playing out drug conflict in Mexico. When we left off, you were talking about the role that the Mexican army has played in the drug trade. If you could, elaborate a little bit more on that and talk about specifically what you saw in Juárez.

BRUCE LIVESEY, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Sure. Juárez has become now the most dangerous city in the world. It's-there, essentially, about 7 to 10 people are murdered every day. And the story that's generally been told is that it's a war between two drug cartels, so the Juárez drug cartel, which has been there for a long time, and the Sinaloan drug cartel, which is trying to move in. In early 2008, violence in Juárez sort of went from being sort of normal to escalating. In March of that year, the Calderón government sent the army in to essentially occupy Juárez. And then the violence got much worse and has continued to get much worse in spite of the army's presence. So this seemed very counterintuitive. You know, what was going on? Why was the violence getting much worse? And what we discovered or what I discovered is that essentially the army has taken sides. They have sided with the Sinaloan drug cartel against the Juárez Cartel, and they are helping primarily the Sinaloans take out members of the Juárez Cartel. So, essentially, the assassins for each of the cartels are locked in this sort of deadly battle. But, essentially, the Sinaloans are winning, and they're winning with the assistance of the Mexican army.

FREESTON: So one thing that some other people have pointed out that I've read, particularly in the Mexican press, was that while the justification for something like Plan Mérida, where the US is giving a little over $1 billion a year to help the Mexican army, is justified from the perspective that the Mexican army is undermanned or under-armed against these drug cartels, that the drug cartels are more powerful and have better weaponry and things like this, well, at the same time we're not really seeing many casualties in the Mexican military, are we? And so maybe talk about that.

LIVESEY: The odd skirmish occurs. But again the question is, you know, is the skirmish occurring because the Mexican army is taking on, again, some elements of the drug cartel on behalf of another cartel? And what we saw in Juárez was that the army essentially was playing this role of doing nothing. They would sort of show up after the murders. And there was evidence that they were clearly helping the assassins of the Sinaloan Cartel do their business. So in Juárez the evidence is essentially their role was just to kind of drive around in circles and allow and/or help the Sinaloans take out the Juárez Cartel.

FREESTON: Who were the victims of these murders?

LIVESEY: Well, again, another complicating factor, especially in Juárez, is that what's occurred in the last few years is that Juárez has become a market for drugs, so the amount of addicted Mexicans has also exploded. So there are two things happening in Juárez. There is the Sinaloans trying to take out the leadership and foot soldiers of the cartels. They're also taking out the street dealers of competing gangs who sell drugs in Juárez. And you have things that just don't-in that respect, where they've gone into drug clinics, so clinics that are being set up to get people off drugs, and they've massacred the addicts, and in order to send a message: don't get off the drugs. The other thing that's clearly happened is there's a lot of innocent bystanders getting killed. There's enormous industry and shakedown rackets. So they're going into businesses and to homes and they're basically demanding money from people, and if they don't pay, they shoot them. So, like, the violence is, like, on about three or four levels: there's, you know, what-the army killing people; there's the cartels killing cartel members; there's cartel members taking out, you know, neighborhood people who are not paying or businesses who are not paying, essentially, graft.

FREESTON: Is there any way to tell, necessarily, at what level this relationship is between the army and the drug cartels? Is it happening at a local level? Or how high up does it go? Is there any way to tell?

LIVESEY: It's hard to. We-and that was the question we asked. We said, how-what we were told was that it definitely goes up to the level of the district commander. So the regional commanders are in on it, because the commanders would change, but the Mexican army's role would not change. What we were told was generally-is the corruption occurs at a somewhat regional level. So once the army moved into a region, the drug cartels essentially would cut a deal with the army commanders. But whether it goes all the way up to the generals who report to Calderón, we don't know.

FREESTON: Well, there's also-you know, the political leadership, both not only in Mexico but in the US, must be aware of this at this point. I mean, the US has DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] agents on the ground there as well. I mean, is there any recognition that this is going on, any acknowledgment?

LIVESEY: We spent some time trying to ascertain that, and we felt that, yes, there are elements of the DEA in particular and aspects of the American government who believe this to be true. The problem is that they have drunk the Kool-Aid, you know, that for political reasons it is not good politics in America to suggest that they are funding an organization, which is the Mexican army, that essentially is working for drug cartels, even if they think it might be going on. They essentially put blinkers up in that respect. So we discovered that, yes, there are elements of the intelligence community in the United States who are aware of this, but that it is politically, you know, problematic, if you're in those institutions, to begin questioning your masters. And that's really what's happened.

FREESTON: Alright, Bruce. Well, thank you very much for your time.

LIVESEY: Thanks, Jesse.

FREESTON: And will you be heading back to Mexico any time soon?

LIVESEY: I'm going back to Texas to do a story some time later this year, somewhat related to the drug trade, yeah.

FREESTON: Well, hopefully we can talk to you again after that.

LIVESEY: Okay.

FREESTON: Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.