Drugs, Murder and Mexico

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/12/quiet-shift-mexicos-drug-war/

It all started with something that is by now horrifyingly routine: a YouTube video of the gory execution of a Mexican policeman by a gang of narcotraficantes. Posted on July 22, it begins with the interrogation of the policeman, who was from the northern state of Durango, by masked gangsters employed, in this case, by one of Mexico’s most powerful trafficking groups, the Zetas. Such interrogations have been circulated on the Internet before, and, as here, they often end in death. However, in the course of this particular video the policeman stated that the director of a federal prison in Durango was in the habit of releasing and arming certain prisoners at night, so that they could commit murders aimed, broadly speaking, at the Zetas. The recent massacre of seventeen people attending a birthday party in the neighboring state of Coahuila was the work of these temporarily sprung assassins, the policeman said, as were two other mass killings earlier this year.

eh, i think the scenes of hamsterdam at night were p horrific, also there was still murder and death (rip johnny). the open prostitution freaked me out more than the drugs though.

another student actually taught me about the zetas a few years ago. i had never heard of them, and she was from nuevo laredo, so she grew up around a LOT of drug-fueled violence.

this is a book bowden coauthored with an artist/architect? i would rather read the other one, but would like to see this one

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EHZlrvTnL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

my first experiences with learning about how the drug trade affects people beyond the users and sellers were when i was in colombia (bogota) in 1996, which is also the year that colombia was 'decertified' by the us in their cooperation in the "war on drugs"

what a farce that was

to answer harbl's q, i imagine casual, semi-regular, or recreational cocaine use makes up most of the use in this country, more than the use by addicts? i could be vv wrong. who knows about crack, though...

This was talked about all the time in the Las Cruces/El Paso area...I forget it's not on everyone else's radar. My brother who lived in Juarez for a couple years says this stuff is "overblown" but I think he was referring to some of the more seemingly hyperbolic ideas that were around like "and they will always make a necklace out of your dried nipples" and not the situation in general. Actually, I should ask what he meant by that at all, he was on a mission at the time & not even allowed to read the news.

gonna go seek that book out, thanks LL

― ('_') (omar little), Friday, August 27, 2010 5:11 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

same - thank you

it is hard to understand how anyone could read any of these stories and think this is 'overblown'. I mean, jeez, imagine if we found 72 bodies somewhere in america.

well it's just like this situation didn't really hit the national news heavy until those people from the embassy were killed

A lot of the violence in the city has been characterized by this kind of symbolism. Bodies have been dumped on many occasions in lots and playgrounds near schools, with children gathering around the crime scene to watch as police bag and remove the dead. Drug rehab clinics have been the scenes of mass murders. People are shot down in broad daylight during the normal hubub of everyday life, on main streets and in restaurants. Considering this, it's clear that what's happening isn't just a war between rival cartels, but a campaign of terror against the local population. The murdered groom's father conveyed perfectly the effect of this kind of violence to the El Paso Times: "I'm confused, frustrated and in despair. My wife, she is devastated." There really aren't any better emotions you could hope to inspire in a population you're trying to control.

[...]

A week before Easter, typewritten messages spread around Porvenir that anyone who hadn't left the area by Easter Sunday would be killed. Citizens packed up and left in droves. While no such large scale attack ever came, the assault on the social climate of the community was enough. Residents were threatened with death on the most holy day of the Catholic calendar. Like this week's wedding murders, the sanctuary of religion was directly challenged when the main church in town was burned to the ground on Good Friday.

I felt like the wire could have done this better...haven't seen the episodes recently but I remember the drug-zone experienment worked *so* perfectly, was *so* successful that it was just sorta absurd.

― iatee, Friday, August 27, 2010 5:14 PM Bookmark

Wait what? This is not what happened at all.

i was searching for a picture of Renssellaer Lee's White Labyrinth: Cocaine and Political Power, but all I found was this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51d8YjGsArL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Surely things have been written since these books about cocaine and the Andean region in the 80s/90s, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with.

okay I remember it being a grimey area but basically just turning into some nice market economy where people didn't shoot each other

xp

smoke local pot. and leave everything else alone.

^^^this is how I roll. thankfully in the Bay Area local weed is abundant. always thought cocaine was morally indefensible for all kinds of reasons, the trade being one of them.

One thing that fascinates me is how the cocaine industry, the heroin industry, and the meth industry are so different from each other. Marijuana is another story because it is a plant and doesn't require the heavy processing or chemical component that the other drugs require in order to be put onto the market. I agree wholeheartedly with Scott and Shakey in the "buy local weed, avoid everything else" philosophy.

No one asked, but Methland is a very readable book about how greedy companies, declining farmtowns, waning industry, and an influx of immigrant workers took its toll on the people (and law enforcement) of one Iowa town.

The writing is VERY annoying at times, but the book's content is interesting.

http://www.poststar.com/app/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/methland-198x300.jpg

perhaps i'm incredibly naive but i would like to believe that IRL friends or ilxors i've seen who have bragged about using coke (and other drugs with morally indefensible industries producing them) on other threads might read stuff like this and decide to back off for those reasons.

yeah, don't do coke, ppl

and listen i've seen people i *like* here who have mentioned it, like they do it occasionally, and it kinda breaks my heart y'all.

i feel more strongly about this than i do about meat, produce, diamonds, sweatshops, pretty much anything
i dumped a bf once for doing coke at a party in front of me and to this day i feel good about it
f u dude, knowing what you know
hope you had fun

by nature i am not a tyrant, but this stuff is so violent and pervasive and affects the lives of so many innocent people. it's just super fucked up.

otms

The friends I have who are most likely to use cocaine also seem most likely to be amoral about these kinds of things.

funny how that works

there's no complexity here, like it's not 'should I boycott israeli companies because I think the government is evil?' - I mean you are literally funneling money to mass murderers

Exactly, you are directly paying terrible people to kill other people so that they can bring you the very thing for which you are paying.

this "hand-wringing" may elicit some eye-rolls but w/e

"Hi, I'd like a large pizza with anchovies, pepperoni, mushrooms, and please brutally kill any other pizza deliverymen you see, and their families, along the way"

"Well don't get all MORALISTIC with me!"

i have a lot of sympathy for addicts too, i get it, i just wish people would know how far the tentacles of the product they're buying/selling reach. it always goes further than most people think.

Defend the Indefensible: Cocaine

it's funny because while cocaine itself is dud imo, if it were legal i'd be mostly okay with it. of course i'd still think it was kind of annoying and it would lead to a lot more "casually mentioning your illicit activities" stories than one already hears in one's life, but i wouldn't have many moral objections. and i tend to think the health concerns are a lesser issue than the ones we're discussing here.

i feel bad because i've never done it and would like to try it the once, and thus would carry on the regular joe trade and so now i'm not so sure.

of course -- i don't care about the substance itself the same way i don't care about, say, mcdonald's chicken mcnuggets. i wouldn't eat them, but other people are welcome to. it's just that they're not getting little kids shot and killed, making shitty violent people rich, or ruining local economies (quite as badly).

it's the business, not the product that bothers me.

to rephrase, i hate the game, not the player

i think the scolding "it's all bad for you!" nature of the anti-drug campaigns have not had any effect whatsoever, really. i think anyone who knows people who have done drugs and have not become addicts (which is to say, most people) would have evidence to suggest that the "you take drugs and you will DIE ON THE SPOT" nature of the campaigns were overstated. i'm not sure the moral argument would work, either, because moral concerns don't usually fly well with "people who just like to have a good time" or w/e.

anti-drug campaigns have historically (ie for the past 100 years or so) been so full of the most egregious lies and misinformation that it's a bit "boy who cried wolf" at this point. nobody believes any of the bullshit and they aren't about to start.

by which I mean even if the US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.) no one would bat an eye - the source is totally suspect and not credible

I'm a tiny bit ambivialent about this since I'm not a big fan of cocaine, especially now that I'm in my dotage, but feel that what with my penchant for liquor and weed, I shouldn't be too censorious about other people's favorite mind-altering substances. Liquor is arguably far more destructive globally than coke and that one time, when we tried to ban it here in the US, surprise, we engendered a blood-thirsty milieu that shot each other full of holes with tommy guns and diversified into lots of other illegal ventures and gave birth to whole generation who cast a jaded eye on the law, generally. Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.)

Tbf, they have noted that the illegal drug trade funds violence and terrorism, much like the counterfeit goods trade does.

regime change starts at home so to speak iirc so maybe we could set an example.

legalization is one answer. but its only one part of the puzzle. for profit prison industry - a growth industry that wants to KEEP growing - is another part of it. and law enforcement in some ways depends on drug money to fund themselves! and yeah there is plenty of blood sugar and blood coffee and blood sneakers, etc, etc, out there.

Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

Also, this kind of run-on sentence reminds me exactly of how some people sound on coke.

um, i guess i was trying to say that the drug war is a BIG business. in a capitalist country that thrives on businesses getting bigger. and the profits keep coming in as long as the bloody mess continues. or am i just a raving loon.

the only argument that is often made is yes, yes there are other things in the world which cause pain and suffering. it is quite bad here in l.a. w/r/t drug violence in places as well, such as "legal" (there is a question about how legal they are since they get raided by the feds) weed dispensaries are knocked off by gangs and clerks working there get killed, maybe b/c the gangs view them as competition?

one of the arguments, i should say

i'm not saying anything that anyone doesn't know. it has hurt my heart for many years. so many dead and locked up and gone and so much suffering and basically it just gets worse every decade.

i don't think, btw, that the answer is to say "well there are other bad things in the world, too!" because this is a particularly nasty thing, so violent, so reprehensible, and i would love to see worldwide legalization of every illegal drug. people who want them are going to get them anyway.

Not sure if I exactly followed Michael White's post but I don't think the suffering in the coffee, sugar, tea trades are quite on the level of drug gang violence, not to mention that there is, e.g., fair trade, shade grown coffee available. I mean I'm often heard espousing the same sort of "Shit is complicated, everything is global, everything results in suffering" kind of talk, but I think I can draw a line at a product that directly results in so much killing.

i'm not sure i follow the logic of this conversation.

i am curious whether the de facto legalization of weed in california is going to lead to a drop in arrests for meth, coke, heroin, etc. we'll see after the data shakes out (maybe in 5 or 10 years?) i guess ...

what i'm not sure about is whether people agree that legalizing cocaine will reduce violence or disagree

we don't know for sure but chances are quite likely "yes"