Drugs, Murder and Mexico

i have read something recently about mexico flirting with the idea of legalizing marijuana unilaterally. it's mexicans who are being murdered, after all.

i know a couple of folks in l.a. who have grimly mentioned shit that has gone down with relatives in mexico, almost matter-of-factly.

The body count in Mexico stood at 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 reported in 2007, officials said, with over 1400 in Ciudad Juárez alone.[27][28] The population of Ciudad Juárez had to change their daily routine and many try to stay home in the evening hours. Public life is almost paralyzed out of fear of being kidnapped or hit by a stray bullet. On 20 February 2009, the U.S. State Department announced in an updated travel alert that "Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008." [29] On 12 March 2009, police found "at least seven" partially buried bodies in the outskirts of the city, close to the US-Mexican border. Five severed heads were discovered in ice boxes, along with notes to rivals in the drug-wars. Beheadings, attacks on the police and shootings are common in some regions.[30] In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.[31] Patients were lined up in the corridor and gunned down in the early evening. On September 3, 2009 the Associated Press reported that the day before gunmen broke down the door of the El Aliviane drug rehabilitation center and lined their victims up to a wall shooting 17 dead. The authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers, the government is struggling to maintain Ciudad Juárez's police force. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.[32] In late 2008 one murder victim was found near a school hanging from a fence with a pig's mask on his face and another one was found beheaded hanging from a bridge in one of the busier streets of the city.

smoke local pot. and leave everything else alone. unless the canadians start making cocaine or something. the 72 bodies in a room thing...i mean, what can you even say? its just so awful in every possible way. i blame this country so much already for so many things...its a long list. i don't even know what to say.

i sort of attempted to tackle this in a trolling manner on the cocaine C or D thread, but i think it was generally ignored in favor of people relating war stories, i.e. "that time i did coke was a real good time, classic."

to repeat:

In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.[31] Patients were lined up in the corridor and gunned down in the early evening.

message being, what exactly? don't try to quit or we will kill you?

Are there any good explanations for why the violence has so sharply increased? Is there something driving drug profits up at the moment?

i got in a big argt once with a friend about drug legalization, my points being basically that making something illegal doesn't erase demand, so the "business model" of suppliers necessarily involves violence; and that our strategy for the past 50-odd years has to be considered a failure, so why not try something else that seems to have worked ok in other places.

the counter-argument was basically "you watch the wire"

GBX just asked me to post this link. I actually had it open already in another tab. It's insane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez

In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.

What does this even mean? OOH it makes it sound like the turf battle just happened to take place on the property of the clinic, OTOH "massacre" suggests deliberately killing the patients but doesn't sound like a "turf battle".

yeah that particular aspect of this is nuts, E.

i have several particularly sharp and otherwise decent friends who indulge in the odd bit of cocaine use, and what can you really say? saying stuff like this comes off as preachy and playing right into the hands of those who want to keep drugs illegal, one could argue. and yet...no.

The situation in Juarez nuts and ridiculous that more attention hasn't been paid to it. I think Jennifer Lopez made a movie about it a couple years ago called "Boderlands" iirc but I don't ever remember seeing it in theaters and suspect it went straight to video.

what proportion of american drug consumption is "the odd bit of cocaine use" vs. crack addicts, who i don't feel comfortable blaming for any of this

have you read 2666 by roberto bolano? it takes place in a fictional version of juarez and this is one of the main threads the novel focuses on. it's really grim.

How does what's going on now compare to what went on in Colombia/Miami in the 80s? Because I seem to remember that what happened then was the result of a price spike which in turn was the result of an enforcement crackdown.

Omar - I have not but I will do. The whole thing fascinates me because it's just so unbelievable.

This is all worth reading: http://www.theawl.com/author/john-murray

Last week in Ciudad Juarez, the Federal Police received an emergency call from a payphone explaining that a police officer had been shot and was lying wounded on the Avenue 16 de Septiembre, a street named for the day of Mexican independence from the Spanish. Several federal police officers and an emergency team of paramedics arrived to tend to the injured officer. A TV crew arrived on the scene around the same time. As the officers and doctors gathered around the body to assess the damage, nearby members of the Juarez cartel used a cell phone to detonate a bomb hidden in a parked car at the intersection. The blast killed two Federales, a doctor and an emergency technician, and left 9 other people wounded from shrapnel.

sheesh

has anyone read the charles bowden ciudad juarez books? they're on my list, as i've read all of his other books (down by the river is esp. good) but i haven't read them yet. i think he has two?

i've had many (too many to count) students whose lives have been affected by this shit.

No! Amanda can you email me some book recs? Or put them here? I'll get the one you mentioned. I've only read news articles on it but never any full books.

have you read 2666 by roberto bolano? it takes place in a fictional version of juarez and this is one of the main threads the novel focuses on. it's really grim.

― ('_') (omar little), Friday, 27 August 2010 21:58 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Those 200odd pages of detailed descriptions of murder victims was the most intense thing i've ever read.

Unfortunately I know little-to-nothing about the situation going on, so I don't really know what to say other than f this world

one woman did an entire semester's worth of speeches about growing up in a town where drug lords bought the bridges, paved the roads, rebuilt the schools, and imposed a strict 9pm curfew on everyone who lived there. violators of the curfew were all shot and killed.

here's one
http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/files/2010/04/MurderCity.jpg

one woman did an entire semester's worth of speeches about growing up in a town where drug lords bought the bridges, paved the roads, rebuilt the schools, and imposed a strict 9pm curfew on everyone who lived there. violators of the curfew were all shot and killed.

wow, Amanda

gonna go seek that book out, thanks LL

yeah, it was intense.

not about ciudad juarez, and a little dated, but really well written and interesting
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413VMWXBKRL._SL500_.jpg

glad this is finally a thread. it's astounding how little public attention this gets.

the counter-argument was basically "you watch the wire"

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.

How does what's going on now compare to what went on in Colombia/Miami in the 80s? Because I seem to remember that what happened then was the result of a price spike which in turn was the result of an enforcement crackdown.

I don't think the death tolls were anywhere in today's range

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

Almost exactly eight years to the day Los Zetas did exactly the same thing in Monterrey, killing 50+.

https://time.com/5700543/police-ambushed-mexico-aguililla/

(MORELIA, Mexico) — State police expected the worst when they ventured into the wild township of Aguililla to serve a single warrant. Commanders sent 42 officers in five trucks.

It wasn’t enough. More than 30 suspected drug cartel gunmen were waiting for them Monday, some in vehicles that were apparently armored, prosecutors in Mexico’s western state of Michoacan said.

Officials said the gunmen opened up on the police convoy with .50 caliber sniper rifles and AR-15 and AK-47 assault rifles.

Thirteen officers were killed, some of their bodies still inside the patrol trucks when the vehicles were set afire. Nine other officers were wounded.

The attack — the worst on Mexican law enforcement in years — came in a state where violence blamed on drug gangs has jumped in recent months.

Authorities said the state police convoy was ambushed as it sought to enforce a judicial order at a home in El Aguaje, a town in the municipality of Aguililla, which is the reputed birthplace of Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera, leader of the hyper-violent Jalisco New Generation cartel.

“No attack on the police will go unpunished, and this was a cowardly, devious attack because they laid an ambush in this area of the road,” Gov. Silvano Aureoles said.

Images published in Mexican media showed vehicles burning in the middle of a highway and messages apparently signed by Jalisco New Generation, one of Mexico’s most powerful and rising cartels. Aureoles said their authenticity was under investigation.

Later in the day, an Associated Press journalist saw two gutted patrol cars at the entrance to El Aguaje surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings. Two police trucks were towed away.

Streets were nearly empty as people apparently decided to stay indoors after the violent events.

After the attack, the area in western Mexico’s so-called “hot lands” was reinforced by federal and state security forces, which set up checkpoints to hunt for the assailants.

Michoacan, an important avocado-growing state, has recently has seen a spike in violence that has brought back memories of the bloodiest days of Mexico’s war on drug cartels between 2006 and 2012.

In August, police found 19 bodies in the town of Uruapan, including nine hung from a bridge. Later, an area roughly 45 miles (70 kilometers) north of Aguililla was the scene of fierce clashes between members of Jalisco New Generation and regional self-defense groups.

In 2013, civilian groups faced with what they said was state inaction armed themselves in Michoacan to fight the Knights Templar cartel, one of whose bases was Aguililla. They said they took up arms to defend themselves from kidnappings, extortion and killings by cartels. But some of the self-defense or vigilante groups later became infiltrated by cartels and gangs.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/el-chapo-son-ovidio-guzman-lopez-release-amlo

AMLO will get criticised for this but idk what else they can realistically do short of sending half the army in to lock down a city of 800k people.

another terrible story which of course leads to an idea from DJT that would probably end poorly.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-mexico-cartels-mormons-killed-ambush-145807595.html

President Trump on Tuesday offered to help Mexico “wage WAR on the drug cartels” after a shootout left at least nine Americans dead.

Initial reports indicated the victims were women and children traveling in at least three cars who may have been targeted by mistake or caught in a crossfire between rival gangs. All the victims were believed to be Mormons with dual American-Mexican citizenship.

A relative of one of the victims said his cousin was on her way to the airport when she was shot and killed in her car along with her four children near La Mora, a decades-old religious settlement about 70 miles south of the Arizona border. Her car had been set on fire with the bodies of the victims inside, according to Agence France-Presse. Two other vehicles, containing the bodies of two more women and two children, were found several hours later.

According to the Arizona Republic, at least a dozen people remain missing.

This story is completely bananas. The victims were part of the LeBaron family cult, whose late patriarch was responsible for 25-40 murders from the 1970s on and there is a rumoured link to NXIVM.

This story is like The Wire on acid to me:

The death truck: how a solution to Mexico's morgue crisis created a new horror.

The tale of how a truck trailer containing almost 300 bodies got stranded on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/us/goshen-california-massacre-six-dead/index.html

not Mexico but seems like it's related to the cartel industrial complex, since drug violence is not exclusive to that country.

but obv this kind of thing is happening every other day in this country for reasons not related to "strictly business" so who knows

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/magazine/mexican-journalists-assassinations.html

good piece here. the life of a journalist covering the crimes of the drug industry in Mexico seems like nightmare fuel, not to mention the fear many there probably feel on a daily basis being surrounded by those who might kill them just for not going along w/the cartels. this story mentioned in the piece still really shakes me:

And in 2014, police officers in the rural city Iguala kidnapped 43 students on buses headed for a march in Mexico City and handed them over to a drug cartel that mistakenly assumed they were part of an attack from a rival. This year, a trove of text messages showed that nearly every branch of government in the region — including soldiers, the police and a local mayor — were communicating with the cartel, which killed the students and incinerated some of them in a crematory.

Don Winslow chillingly dramatized that anecdote in The Border.

this post upthread from Euler resonates:

& the erosion of limits on violence is key ; because you see men who are not psychopaths in any usual sense become professional killers, for whom it seems that the first kill is the crucial one, because to do so breaks a taboo that then permits the killer great power thereafter, power that is otherwise thought beyond reach. and it makes you like a god. I've been reading books on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism prior to this & there too you see torrents of violence following the first kills by "ordinary men".

This is an interesting long read on chemical supply for synthetic drugs in Mexico.

https://insightcrime.org/investigations/brokers-lynchpins-precursor-chemical-flow-mexico

Thought this revive was gonna be about Kerry Cartel