Since Mexico is likely to descend further into anarchic violence in the next year, I'm calling dibs on this thread.
Looks like Mexico is becoming more like the old Columbia every day. Soon they'll be breaking out the artillery pieces.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-arms-race15-2009mar15,0,229992.story
Quote
Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army -- including grenade launchers and antitank rockets -- and the police are feeling outgunned.
By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson
March 15, 2009
Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City -- It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.
The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.
Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.
These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.
"There is an arms race between the cartels," said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.
"One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them."
There are even more ominous developments: Authorities reported three thefts of several hundred pounds of blasting material from industrial explosives plants in Durango during a four-day period last month. Authorities believe the material may have been destined for car bombs or remotely detonated roadside devices, which have been used with devastating effect in Iraq, killing more than 1,822 members of U.S.-led forces since the war there began nearly six years ago.
The Mexican army has recovered most of the material, and there has been no reported use of such devices.
Grenades or military-grade weapons have been reported in at least 10 Mexican states during the last six months, used against police headquarters, city halls, a U.S. consulate, TV stations and senior Mexican officials. In a three-week period ended March 6, five grenade attacks were launched on police patrols and stations and the home of a commander in the south-central state of Michoacan. Other such attacks occurred in five other states during the same period.
At least one grenade attack north of the border, at a Texas nightclub frequented by U.S. police officers, has been tied to Mexican traffickers.
How many weapons have been smuggled into Mexico from Central America is not known, and the military-grade munitions are still a small fraction of the larger arsenal in the hands of narcotics traffickers. Mexican officials continue to push Washington to stem the well-documented flow of conventional weapons from the United States, as Congress holds hearings on the role those smuggled guns play in arming Mexican drug cartels.
There is no comprehensive data on how many people have been killed by heavier weapons.
But four days after the assault on the Zihuatanejo police station, four of the city's officers were slain in a highway ambush six miles from town on the road to Acapulco. In addition to the standard AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, the attackers fired at least six .50-caliber shells into the officers' pickup. The vehicle blew up when hit by what experts believe was a grenade or explosive projectile. The bodies of the officers were charred.
"These are really weapons of war," said Alberto Fernandez, spokesman for the Zihuatanejo city government. "We only know these devices from war movies."
U.S. law enforcement officials say they detected the smuggling of grenades and other military-grade equipment into Mexico about a year and a half ago, and observed a sharp uptick in the use of the weapons about six months ago.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years, in contrast to 59 seized over the previous two years.
The enhanced weaponry represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market. Some may be sold directly to the traffickers by corrupt elements of national armies, authorities and experts say.
The single deadliest attack on civilians by drug traffickers in Mexico took place Sept. 15 at an Independence Day celebration in the central plaza of Morelia, hometown of President Felipe Calderon and capital of Michoacan. Attackers hurled fragmentation grenades at the celebrating crowd, killing eight people and wounding dozens more.
Amid the recent spate of attacks in Michoacan, federal police on Feb. 20 announced the discovery of 66 fragmentation grenades in the fake bottom of a truck intercepted in southern Mexico, just over the border from Guatemala. The two men arrested with the cargo told police they were transporting the grenades to Morelia.
Grenades used in three attacks in Monterrey and Texas were linked to a single Monterrey warehouse, packed with explosives and high-caliber guns, reportedly belonging to the Gulf cartel. Mexican authorities raided the warehouse in October and seized the cache, which contained South Korean-manufactured grenades similar to the American M67 fragmentation grenade.
Grenades from the same lot were used in a Jan. 6 attack on the Televisa television station in Monterrey, which caused damage but no injuries, and during an Oct. 12 attack against the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey. The device at the consulate did not detonate.
Late on the night of Jan. 31, a Saturday, a man tossed a grenade into the El Booty Lounge in Pharr, Texas. Three off-duty Texas police officers were there, though authorities would not say whether they were the target. The explosive, which did not detonate, was traced to the Monterrey warehouse.
Traffickers using M203 40-millimeter grenade launchers last year attacked and killed eight Mexican federal police officers in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. In the northern border city of Nogales, the Sonora state police commander was killed Nov. 2 in an ambush by purported traffickers firing AK-47s and lobbing grenades. He had been returning from a meeting with U.S. authorities in Arizona to discuss gun smuggling.
In the western state of Durango, three people, including a 3-year-old child, were killed in a grenade attack in January.
The firepower has gone beyond grenades. Armed with light antitank weapons, would-be assassins went after the nation's top counternarcotics prosecutor in December 2007. The assailants were intercepted before they reached Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who was not hurt. The weapons seized were linked to the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
"They were betting on being able to escalate with a spectacular strike precisely to terrify society," Santiago Vasconcelos said at the time. (He was killed in November in a plane crash.)
Beyond the weaponry, drug gangs for several years have demonstrated the ability to form squads and employ military tactics, including the use of assault rifles, hand grenades, grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons to pin down army forces. This has enabled them to attack army patrols frontally, as they did with lethal results Feb. 7 in the central state of Zacatecas, killing one sergeant and critically wounding a colonel.
"At this stage, the drug cartels are using basic infantry weaponry to counter government forces," a U.S. government official in Mexico said. "Encountering criminals with this kind of weaponry is a horse of a different color," the official said.
"It's not your typical patrol stop, where someone pulls a gun. This has all the makings of an infantry squad, or guerrilla fighting."
The fear of guerrilla warfare was compounded in February when 270 pounds of dynamite and several hundred electric detonators were stolen from a U.S. firm in the state of Durango. On Valentine's Day, about 20 masked gunmen, led by a heavyset man wearing gold rings and chains, stormed the warehouse of a subsidiary of Austin Powder Co., an industrial explosives manufacturer, according to official accounts. They overpowered guards and emptied the warehouse. Two similar thefts were reported within four days in the same area.
Although the Mexican army recovered most of the dynamite, the incident augurs an even bloodier trend, officials said.
"There is only one reason to have bulk explosives," said Thomas G. Mangan, spokesman in Phoenix for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "An improvised explosive device. A car bomb."
In addition to grenades, high-powered guns such as the .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle have become a weapon of choice in narcotics traffickers' arsenals, Mangan said. Unlike grenades and antitank weapons, the .50-caliber guns can be obtained by ordinary citizens in the U.S. and smuggled easily into Mexico, like the tons of assault rifles and automatic pistols.
Mexican law enforcement, such as the police in Zihuatanejo, is grossly outgunned. Officers have protested, seeking better protective gear, weaponry and pay.
Shortly after the Zihuatanejo attacks, police officers staged a brief work stoppage outside their headquarters, where scars from the grenade attack were still visible. One of the blasts left a cereal bowl-shaped divot in the stone pavement and pockmarks on the front of the police building. It went off 100 feet from the nearest street, prompting some officers to suspect that the assailants employed a grenade launcher.
Police have piled sandbags 4 feet high around the compound and security is tight. Commanders have bought 10 bulletproof vests, but say they need at least 280 to equip the city's 343 officers.
The police commander, Pablo Rodriguez, said his officers are terrified. They are armed with semiautomatic .223-caliber rifles made in Italy, Germany and Mexico. The rifles, with folding stocks, are snazzy, but they are no match for the weapons being stockpiled by the drug cartels.
"They are good weapons, but to counteract the types of weapons they're using against us, they're not equal," Rodriguez said.
His officers know they don't stand a chance. Not five days after the highway attack that blew up the police truck, Rodriguez had jobs to fill. Twenty-two of his cops had abruptly quit.
[email protected]
[email protected]
More drugs need to be legalized, regulated, and taxed. :)
Colombia has pretty broken the cartels and insurgent groups, right? Been reading lately how the Colombian government has made huge gains, that the military and police have been trained and operate far more effectively than in the past, much of that training done by the US. Mexico can do the same, just will take a while, though maybe the reason we see more in the media, and more clashes with the cartels, is due to more effective actions by the Mexican authorities.
Where is Zombie Winfield Scott when we need him? :cry:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 17, 2009, 06:11:19 PM
Since Mexico is likely to descend further into anarchic violence in the next year, I'm calling dibs on this thread.
Looks like Mexico is becoming more like the old Columbia every day. Soon they'll be breaking out the artillery pieces.
You know back before drugs Mexico was one of the safest countries around. America ruins Mexico once again.
That's why we need to legalize all that shit and grow it here. To not do so hurts our brown brothers to the south. :(
Quote from: Valmy on March 25, 2009, 08:20:05 AM
America ruins Mexico once again.
Spain did it first! :blurgh:
Quote from: Caliga on March 25, 2009, 07:31:44 AM
Where is Zombie Winfield Scott when we need him? :cry:
Zachary Taylor was cooler. :mad:
Quote from: Phillip V on March 24, 2009, 11:41:03 PM
More drugs need to be legalized, regulated, and taxed. :)
Ah yes, the magic bullet that will cure all our woes. Of course, if we tax them, we'll have a problem with bootlegging.
Quote from: derspiess on March 25, 2009, 10:21:38 AM
Ah yes, the magic bullet that will cure all our woes. Of course, if we tax them, we'll have a problem with bootlegging.
I don't know. I might trust FDA regulated e more than stuff I can buy in a back alley.
The Economist recently ran a great story on this. Mexico and by extension, us, are in deep trouble.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 25, 2009, 10:18:19 AMZachary Taylor was cooler. :mad:
I find it much easier to envision Winfield Scott as a zombie however.
:(
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-revenge-attack23-2009dec23,0,2159235.story?track=rss
Quote
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Mexico drug raid hero's family slaughtered
Hours after the burial of a marine who died in a raid that killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, gunmen burst into his home and killed family members.
Reporting from Mexico City - The young marine received the highest military honors that the Mexican state could offer. Killed during a raid that ended the life of a notorious drug lord, the marine was buried a hero, ushered to his grave by an honor guard of commandos in camouflage, his mother awarded a folded flag.
Hours later, the grieving mother, the marine's sister, his brother and an aunt were mowed down by gunmen in a revenge attack that sent a chilling message to the Mexican military combating drug traffickers.
The slaughter of Melquisedet Angulo Cordova's family early Tuesday horrified Mexicans seemingly inured to a drug-war brutality that has claimed more than 15,000 lives in three years of spectacular violence. The killing, especially, of a mother seemed to violate the most basic code of conduct that even coldblooded hit men and traffickers obeyed.
Was it a mistake to have so publicly identified the family of the felled combatant? Military commandos carry out their dangerous missions with their faces covered by masks and with no hint of personal identity.
By contrast, the Angulo family had been seen in newspaper photos and on television, first during an elaborate memorial ceremony at navy headquarters over the weekend and then at the marine's funeral Monday in his home state of Tabasco. It appeared that no special protection was provided for the family.
Angulo, 30, died in a fierce gun battle a week ago in the city of Cuernavaca when navy special forces attacked the hide-out of Arturo Beltran Leyva, head of a major narco-trafficking organization. Beltran Leyva and six of his gunmen were killed in what the government immediately hailed as an important victory in the war on organized crime -- and one it was eager to celebrate.
Officials at the time also predicted more violence as Beltran Leyva's lieutenants might fight for control of the organization and other cartels would push to seize pieces of Beltran Leyva's empire. Instead, the first blow appears to have been an act of revenge and intimidation.
Beltran Leyva, who split with the powerful Sinaloa cartel, had allied with the so-called Zetas, ruthless gunmen who authorities speculated might be responsible for the slaying of Angulo's family members.
"The message was to the military and to the government, that if you hit us hard, we will respond in unprecedented ways," said Raul Benitez, a security expert. "This is the wrath of the Beltran Leyva family. It is very worrisome and should put the entire government on alert."
The decision by officials to show off pictures of Beltran Leyva's body -- half undressed and covered in peso bills -- may also have goaded the dead trafficker's allies into such depraved retaliation, several experts said.
President Felipe Calderon condemned the killings as "cowardly, barbaric" acts that showed a complete "lack of scruples" by criminal gangs. But he vowed to press ahead with the military-led offensive that has deployed about 45,000 troops across the nation.
Critics said the slaying of the Angulo family members exposed a serious security lapse emblematic of the government's troubled offensive against the powerful drug cartels, which Calderon launched shortly after taking office in December 2006. The gunmen evidently had no trouble locating the marine's home, suggesting they had benefited from inside information.
"This has shown the inability of the state to offer protection to its frontline troops," said Ricardo Aleman, a columnist for El Universal newspaper.
"We do not have the training, intelligence or other elements to wage this war."
Prosecutors in Tabasco said the gunmen converged on the family home in at least three vehicles shortly after midnight. They burst into the small residence where the family slept and opened fire.
The mother, Irma Cordova, 48, was killed by a single gunshot. Angulo's sister Yolidabey, 22, was hit by seven bullets; the aunt, Josefa Angulo, 46, by 10. A 28-year-old brother, Benito, was shot once and died later at a hospital.
Nearly three dozen spent bullet casings were found in the house, state prosecutor Rafael Gonzalez said.
Army troops canvassed the area Tuesday. No suspects had been arrested.
Javier Ibarrola, an expert on the Mexican military, described the attack as "unprecedented," yet also predictable.
"What is really most alarming is that there wasn't the intelligence to foresee this, to adequately study what the traffickers' reactions were going to be," Ibarrola said, adding that it was no longer possible for the government to dismiss deadly violence as mere "killing among cartels."
"We are not facing a criminal group but a corps of combatants who are going to exact revenge and take territory from the government," he said on Mexican television. "The government is not prepared for this. Presidential speeches do not scare them."
Angulo's mother had spoken to reporters Monday at the funeral, telling them how important her children were to her.
"Thinking as a mother, I used to feel very sad and hurt for the families of soldiers and police who had been killed. It would make me cry," she said. "And now, now it is my turn."
[email protected]
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Quote from: derspiess on March 25, 2009, 10:21:38 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on March 24, 2009, 11:41:03 PM
More drugs need to be legalized, regulated, and taxed. :)
Ah yes, the magic bullet that will cure all our woes. Of course, if we tax them, we'll have a problem with bootlegging.
At least there would be an income at all. And now you're trying to get hold of the same people already.
QuoteHours after the burial of a marine who died in a raid that killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, gunmen burst into his home and killed family members.
That's some
muchos huevos there.
Now the Mexican government should declare open season on the families of drug barons and gang leaders.
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how: they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Mexico way."
Hmm... this could make an interesting social experiment. Perhaps Timmy-taint could end the Mexican Drug War by making it passe...
Wonder if this would work for peace in the Middle East. :P
Even if this wasn't random, not a good sign when gunmen feel confident enough to kill that many people so publicly.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35170527/ns/world_news-americas/
QuoteDeath toll in Mexican party massacre rises to 16
Mayor of Ciudad Juarez believes the killings may have been random
updated 4:41 p.m. ET Feb. 1, 2010
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The mayor of a violent Mexican border city said Monday he fears a shooting that killed 16 students at a party may have been random because the victims were "good kids" with no apparent ties to drug gangs.
The death toll of the weekend massacre in Ciudad Juarez, one of the deadliest cities in the world, rose to 16 after three more victims died at hospitals, according to the Chihuahua state attorney general's office.
The young people were gathered to watch a boxing match Saturday night when two trucks drove up loaded with armed men who opened fire. Some people were shot as they tried to flee and their bodies were found near neighboring homes.
The victims' ages ranged from 15 to 20.
Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said police were still trying to determine the motive and had not ruled out that any of the victims were involved with drugs. However, he said they seemed to be "good kids, students, athletes."
'No logical explanation'
Witnesses and relatives insisted the young people were targeted by mistake or randomly. If that's the case, Reyes said it would be unprecedented even for the violent Ciudad Juarez, where rampant drug warfare is common.
"There is no logical explanation, a concrete reason for this event. This is something that worries us, gratuitous or random criminal acts," Reyes told MVS Radio. "It goes way beyond what had been happening and puts Ciudad Juarez in even greater danger."
Authorities have offered a reward of 1 million pesos ($76,200) for information leading to the capture of the gunmen. Reyes said police have received five calls with tips that could be useful, but he did not elaborate.
"The people of Juarez must demand that this is investigated thoroughly and we must demand justice for such deplorable crimes," he said at a news conference later Monday.
A large crowd gathered at the scene of the attack in Villas de Salvarcar, a working class neighborhood of cinderblock homes partly surrounded by a fence topped by barbed wire. Some people had set down candles.
One woman, who identified herself only as Martha out of fear for her safety, said both of her sons died in the attack. She said they both played on their high school football team.
"Who took my two boys?" she said. "What harm could they have done to anyone?"
A girl who gave only her first name, Linda, said her cousin, 17-year-old Jose Adrian Encina, was killed. She described him as a good student who aspired to be a doctor and had received an academic recognition award from Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baez.
Battling for turf
In another attack in Ciudad Juarez on Monday, armed men burst into a bar around dawn and killed four men and a woman, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors' office.
Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million people which faces El Paso, Texas, is home to several drug cartel bosses who are battling for turf.
More than 2,600 people were killed last year alone. Authorities say most of the dead have ties to drug gangs but civilians have been caught in the cross fire in increasing numbers. Last year, among the dead were university professors and an honor student.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 15 in a bar in Torreon, a city in the northern state of Coahuila.
Drug violence has surged in many parts of Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops in 2006 to crush powerful cartels. More than 15,000 people have been killed in gang violence since.
So how soon till some Noriega type strongman is running Mexico? :)
Quote from: Caliga on February 02, 2010, 08:21:28 AM
So how soon till some Noriega type strongman is running Mexico? :)
And then III Corps ass rapes the country? :)
What a mess, a low grade insurgency in Mexico. Nearly open warfare with criminal gangs fighting the government.
And also, these gangs are in dozens or more of US cities, so easy to get across the border and find cover, then do their business in the US.
Makes one miss the good 'ol days, when all you had down there were the El Guapo-types.
This thread was gutted by the latest forum collapse.
Anyways, more bad news from Mexico.
http://www.pro8news.com/news/local/Nuevo-Laredo-is-Under-Martial-Law-124397509.html
QuoteNuevo Laredo is Under Martial Law
By KGNS News
Story Created: Jun 22, 2011
Story Updated: Jun 23, 2011
No major media outlets are reporting it, but several hundreds soldiers and marines are en route to Nuevo Laredo, Tamps. (MX) to try and get a grip on a violent few months in our Sister City. Several websites report that Nuevo Laredo, Tamps. (MX) is essentially under martial law as the military moves in and relieves city police officers. Soldiers were seen at police headquarters seizing guns.
It comes as the federal and state government move into a new phase of security efforts in an attempt to turn up the heat on local drug cartels.
More troops are expected to move into the city to beef up security, and it's not just in Nuevo Laredo but the whole state of Tamaulipas.
Last week demonstrators took to the bridges to protest military presence. Many claim those holding signs and chanting "no more military" were paid as much as a $100 a day by cartel members to protest at the bridges.
Drug cartels don't want that information out; therefore, the Mexican media is not reporting it.
Quote from: derspiess on March 25, 2009, 10:21:38 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on March 24, 2009, 11:41:03 PM
More drugs need to be legalized, regulated, and taxed. :)
Ah yes, the magic bullet that will cure all our woes. Of course, if we tax them, we'll have a problem with bootlegging.
Yep, look at the terrible problems caused by bootlegging of alcohol since prohibition ended. Will we never learn?
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/14/11698166-mexicos-drug-war-no-sign-of-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel?lite
QuoteMexico's drug war: No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'
Q: An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, the country is one of the most dangerous in which to be a journalist, and kidnapping and extortion are rife. Is Mexico teetering over into chaos?
A: It is not true, but it's less inaccurate that it was three or four years ago. It's not teetering on the verge of chaos because violence remains concentrated in a few places. But those places have been changing over the past five years. The violence and killings move from one state or one region to another depending on where the army is, where the national police is, what the economic circumstances are in in a given region.
Another factor is that violence now seems to be stabilizing at very high levels. It has pretty much leveled off at about 1,000 drug-linked executions a month –- about 12,000 per year. All very high levels, but it is no longer growing.
The problem is that this has been going on for almost six years. It is much more difficult to claim now that this is a temporary problem that will soon be resolved once the cartels are destroyed or weakened or thrown out or whatever.
At six years on, it is beginning to look more difficult to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
Q: What is the alternative to the war on drugs?
A: I'm against the war. I thought it was a mistake from the very beginning. That said, I can see how many well-intentioned people would for one year, for two years, for three years believe that with a little more time the violence would begin to decline, supply routes of drugs from Mexico to the United States would begin to shut down, the kingpins would be caught and all of this would sort of go away.
None of these things have happened.
A few kingpins have been caught, but many others, the biggest ones, have not. There is no indication that there has been any decrease in overall drug consumption in the U.S. The Americans point to some decline in powder cocaine but an increase in marijuana, methamphetamines, etc. Those come from Mexico also.
If you put it all together, you see very meager results given the exorbitant costs for Mexico.
Q: What are the costs to Mexico of fighting this war?
Advertise | AdChoices
A: I mean 50,000 dead, about 50 billion in expenditures ... kidnappings, extortions, etc. Plus the terrible deterioration of Mexico's image in the world, and for a country that thrives on tourism, that's a big problem. And the human-rights violations that have increased exponentially over the past six years.
Q: So what are the realistic solutions? Deal with the cartels? Legalization? More military involvement? Just live with it?
A: I think it's a combination of all of those. More military involvement -- we don't have, we just don't have the troops, we don't have the money, we don't have the equipment. We don't have any of the things that are necessary to significantly increase the military involvement.
Q: A lot of American troops are coming back from Afghanistan ...
A: Yes, well, they could be sent to Mexico, or they could be sent to the U.S. and the United States could do this job from its side of the border. The point being that ... there is a reasonable case to be made for dramatically increasing the size of the national police force, from 25,000 to 30,000 now to 100,000 or 150,000. That would be the minimum that would be necessary given that ... there is a great consensus in Mexico that municipal and state police are useless.
Q: Indeed, Mexican states have had to fire their entire police forces.
A: Exactly, just redo the whole thing. So there's a good case to be made for increasing the number of national police troops to 100,000 or 150,000. The National Action Party (known by its Spanish acronym PAN) candidate for president has said 150,000 troops. That makes sense, but that takes time, and that costs a lot of money. Now you still are not ever going to ever have enough police to really patrol the whole country. So then the question is, since you're going to have scarce resources, where do you want to concentrate those scarce resources and on what do you want to concentrate them?
And that is where the real disagreement exists between the government and people like myself. The government has basically concentrated all its resources these past five-and-a-half years on fighting drug trafficking. I think those resources should be concentrated on fighting the effects of violence and crime that hurt people –- kidnapping, extortion, holdups, automobile thefts, etc. –- and basically not concentrated on drug trafficking
You don't have to make a deal with the cartels, you don't sit down and talk with them, you don't shake hands with them. You just concentrate your resources on what matters to you; you don't concentrate them on what matters to the U.S.
Q: But in terms of lobbying, isn't legalization a bit of a radioactive subject in the United States? Politicians hardly mention it in public.
A: Yes and no. Just this past weekend a state legislature in Connecticut approved medical marijuana, which for all practical purposes is legalization. This is the 17th state, together with the District of Columbia, and it is moving forward on the ballot in two states for full legalization in November.
So politicians don't touch it, but there's a real movement in American society, which is being reflected in medical marijuana, which is being reflected in a decline in incarceration rates, which is being reflected in more money being spent on prevention and less on punitive policies now in Obama's budgets. You have a lot of changes that are going on, (but) people don't want to talk about them. But there's nothing wrong with hypocrisy. Honesty is overrated in these matters.
Q: "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States" has been a popular saying in Mexico. Do you think most people feel that way?
A: Perhaps it summed up what many Mexicans believed until the 1980s and '90s. But I think that from 1982 onwards it became clear that were it not for recurrent American bailouts and were it not for closer economic ties with the U.S., whether it was tourism or immigration then NAFTA, then investment ... that all of this is an opportunity, it is not a misfortune.
Now most Mexicans believe that by being close to the United States geographically and close economically, socially, etc., is not a misfortune but rather an opportunity.
Q: On the subject of the war on drugs, what can Mexico legitimately ask of the U.S.?
A: It can ask what President Felipe Calderon has been asking and what every president has been asking for the past 40 years, which is, stop consuming so many drugs and repeal the Second Amendment -- stop allowing people to buy guns in the United States and then export them to Mexico.
The usefulness and effectiveness of asking those two things is very much open to question in my mind. I don't see what we gain by whining about this when we know it's not going to happen. It is very similar to how the Americans whine, "Why don't the Mexicans get their house in order, stop sending all these people to the U.S.?"
It's not going to happen. All the whining in the world is not going to stop Mexicans from going to the U.S. They've been doing it for over a century. And all the Mexican whining in the world is not going to stop Americans from smoking pot.
Q: Do you feel optimistic about the future of Mexico?
A: I'm very optimistic. I think if Mexico gets three or four things straight over the next year or two, it can finally take off and become a middle class, poor-rich country within 10-15 years.
And I think it will. We have to put this war behind us. It just can't go on. We have to change some fundamental policies, mainly on the ant-trust fron. We have to find a way to distribute the fruits of growth better, but in a rational, modern, effective way. And we have to improve the educational system rather dramatically and soon.
But these are not impossible to do.
News from Sunday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18052540
QuoteMexico violence: Monterrey police find 49 bodies
Forty-nine mutilated bodies have been found dumped by a roadside near the city of Monterrey in northern Mexico.
Security officials said the 43 men and six women had been decapitated and had their hands cut off, making identification difficult.
They blamed the killings on a conflict between rival drugs gangs - a note left with the bodies said they had been killed by the Zetas cartel.
It is the latest in a series of recent massacres in northern Mexico.
The Zetas have been fighting the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels for control of smuggling routes into the US.
Unidentified
The bodies were found at 04:00 local time (09:00 GMT) in Cadereyta municipality on the road from Monterrey to Reynosa on the US border.
Security officials said the bodies. some of which were in plastic bags, appeared to have been killed at another location up to two days ago and dumped from a truck.
"We know from the characteristics that this is the result of violence between criminal gangs, it is not an attack on the civilian population," Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said.
Nuevo Leon's prosecutor, Adrian de la Garza, said the fact that hands and heads had been cut off made it difficult to identify the victims, but he said it was possible they were Central American migrants.
The grim find comes just days after police discovered the dismembered, decapitated bodies of 18 people in two abandoned vehicles in western Mexico.
Earlier this month 23 dead bodies - 14 of them decapitated - were found in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, also in Nuevo Leon state.
Around 50,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to combat the cartels.
The BBC's Will Grant, in Mexico City says the latest killings show that, although many Mexicans felt the drug violence had been easing this year, the conflict is still claiming many lives, often in the most brutal circumstances.
The three main candidates to succeed Mr Calderon in July's presidential election have all said they would work to end the violence, but have not offered any concrete plans.
Dead Mexican Storage.
And the war grinds on
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/americas/mexico-violence/index.html
Quote
Fifteen Mexican police officers killed in deadly ambush in Jalisco state
Highest death toll in single attack on country's police since 2010
Prosecutors would not say if Jalisco New Generation cartel was behind attack
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Tuesday 7 April 2015 23.13 BST Last modified on Tuesday 7 April 2015 23.16 BST
Fifteen Mexican police officers have been killed and five seriously wounded in the deadliest single attack on the country's security forces in recent memory.
The officers' convoy was ambushed as it drove along a winding mountain road in the western state of Jalisco on Monday afternoon.
The gunmen, believed to belong to the New Generation Jalisco cartel, reportedly used burning vehicles to block the road while they openend fire with machine guns and grenade launchers from the mountainsides.
Large-scale attacks on Mexican police and armed forces have been unusual in Mexico's drug wars, which have killed an estimated 100,000 people over the last eight years.
"Shootouts with criminal groups are common," said security expert Alejandro Hope, pointing to the raging battles often sparked by operations to capture cartel bosses. "What is rare is for government forces to come off worse than the criminal groups."
Monday's ambush produced the biggest death toll since 2010, when 12 federal officers were killed in the neighbouring state of Michoacán in an attack blamed on the La Familia cartel.
It has also drawn attention to the security crisis in Jalisco, in which orchestrated attacks on the security forces and public officials have been escalating in recent months, mostly blamed on the New Generation Jalisco cartel.
Over 70 public officials, including police, have reportedly been killed in Jalisco since 2013.
The state's public security commissioner said Monday's ambush was retaliation for recent law enforcement successes. "It was a reaction to the detentions and actions that we have carried out against organized crime," Alejandro Solorio told Radio Fórmula.
Solorio pointed to the detention of 15 people allegedly linked to a failed attempt to kill him on 30 March. In that attack large trucks were used to block the road while the assassins opened at Solorio with a 50 calibre rifle.
That attack, he said, was itself a retaliation for a the death of a local cartel boss called Heriberto Acevedo, alias 'El Gringo', who was killed in a shootout with police on 23 March.
The New Generation Jalisco Cartel was also blamed for an attack on 19 March that killed five Federal Police.
The cartel emerged in 2010, when an offshoot of the Sinaloa cartel combined with existing local groups. It is currently said to have an important role in the production and trafficking of methamphetamines, and appears to be one of the few Mexican trafficking groups that, along with the Sinaloa cartel, is bucking a trend towards fragmentation of criminal structures.
While primarily focused in Jalisco, the group took on the Zetas cartel in a vicious turf war to control the port city of Veracruz on the Gulf coast in 2011. During that conflict, the New Generation was blamed for dumping 35 bodies on a busy street in Veracruz.
The group is currently said to be seeking to expand its presence in Michoacán, taking advantage of the recent collapse of the Knights Templar cartel which previously controlled the state.
"The New Generation Jalisco cartel does appear to be getting stronger," Hope said.
Hope insisted that it was premature to interpret Monday's ambush as a gauntlet thrown down to the Mexican authorities in general. He said it was more likely to be related to specific local dynamics, perhaps related to recent detentions or deals with members of the police that went wrong.