In Mexico, the Body Count Continues to Rise
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Allan Wall, NewsWithViews, May 27, 2008
In Mexico, the ongoing battles between the drug cartels and between drug cartels and the government go on and on, and the body count mounts.
On May 23rd, 2008, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora announced that, in calendar year 2008 thus far, killings linked to organized crime and narcotrafficking have increased 47% over those in 2007.
According to Medina Mora’s figures, as of May 24th, there had been 1,378 such murders. At this time last year the figure was 940.
Since it’s only May, that means that 2008 is well on the way to surpass the 2007 total of 2,500 killings.
The total body count (to date) under the Calderon Administration is 4,152 killings, 450 of whom were policemen, prosecutors or Mexican military personnel.
(As a point of comparison, the U.S. has lost 4,081 military personnel in Iraq since 2003).
Another way to look at the death toll is as a daily average. On May 22nd (the day before Medina Mora’s higher figures were announced), Mexico’s Jornada newspaper published its calculation of an average of 7.6 killings per day since Calderon took office, although it added that in the week previous the average was 15 such killings per day.
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In a recent grisly example near the city of Durango, 6 severed heads were recently discovered alongside the highway. But they weren’t just flung down on the roadside. No, they were each placed carefully within a cooler, 4 of them in an abandoned vehicle, accompanied by threatening messages to rivals.
It’s probably no coincidence that the heads were placed on the same road where 8 gunmen were slain in a shootout several days earlier.
{snip}
It’s no accident that some Mexican border towns are so violent . Cartels are fighting over the privilege of moving the drugs into U.S. territory.
Combine Mexican corruption and collaboration with drug cartels, and a massive American market for their products, and you’ve got a big problem. The cartels are rich, well-connected, and brazen, and when one narco-chief is killed or imprisoned, another is waiting in the wings to take his place.
Famed Mexico watcher George W. Grayson, professor at the College of William and Mary, has gone so far as to say that “It’s impossible to win the drug war while the demand exists in the United States and Europe.”
Meanwhile in Mexico, the body count continues to mount …
(Posted on June 2, 2008)
Comments
“In Mexico the Body Counts Continue to Rise”
The question is, what makes some Americans, whether liberal, conservative, or other, believe that a closer and closer relationship with the failed State of Mexico, would somehow improve the prospects of the average American citizen?
Posted by Bobby at 6:18 PM on June 2
Drug related? Drug LAW related, if you please.
History clearly shows- society can be improved only one way, and that is by PASSING MORE LAWS. If one discovers a degenerate society, why, that is prima facie evidence that the legislature is too lazy. Get on the horn and scream at them to PASS LAW LAWS.
Posted by mr. snide at 7:03 PM on June 2
It’s easy to win the drug war. All you have to do is secure the borders so that nothing gets through without our consent. Then no more drugs, and thus no drug cartels, and thus no crime in Mexico either.
Posted by at 7:27 PM on June 2
Lou Dobbs is usually the only one who is highlighting the considerable drug related violence along the border, and he looks quite serious and stern when he reports on it, along with his concern that the US is taking it all too lightly.
Much of it is spilling over into the US, and a lot of covert infiltration has also been going on within the US for quite some time, also according to Dobbs and his reporters.
One gang leader actually openly ran for mayor on the US side. How many on our side are influenced by the cartels is not known, but I’m pretty sure it’s much more extensive than anyone would guess.
These cartels seem to be gaining in strength and boldness these last few years, but now that the situation is more guarded in the entire border area the violence seems to be escalating. The harder time they have in moving drugs it seems the more violent they get.
These gangs are very well funded, making them a powerful force to contend with that just might be able to compete almost head to head with the Mexican government in a few more years.
How much territory they’re apt to control on the US side remains to be seen, but failing to guard the US border will only allow them to strengthen there, and right now Mexican troops don’t seem to be able to bring the situation under control on their side, which doesn’t bode well for the US side which has an administration that thinks the threat there is minimal.
The situation could well develop into a real hot spot, and Mexico itself could be in danger of having more in authority succumbing to cartel pesos.
Personally, I’m all for legalizing drugs in order to get rid of the gangs and the illicit profits.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 10:44 PM on June 2
I hope you were being sarcastic, Mr. Snide. Passing laws does no good at all. Enforcement is what counts. The US federal government passes thousands of pages of new laws every year. Since 1934, for instance, it has been a felony to own a shotgun or rifle with a barrel of the correct 18” minimum length - 16” for rifles, but with a wooden buttstock 1/4” of an inch too short to meet the minimum *overall* length of 26”. Even many shooters do not know about the minimum overall length. It is a felony to smoothebore a revolver for the purpose of getting better pattern density with revolver shotshells for shooting birds, as this converts the revolver into a “short-barelled shotgun”. A rifled revolver leaves lousy shot patterns, because the rifing puts a spin on the compressed cluster of pellets. When the shot exits the barrel, Newtonian physics demands that this angular momentum be conserved, and so the pattern looks a like doughnut as the shot rapidly spreads out, with a huge empty space in the middle, just exactly where you want the shot to be, instead out out around the edges. The late, great Elmer Keith had an answer, but he was one of the finest .44” shots in history. He used a rifled revolver with cast bullets, and would just shoot the heads off geese and ducks in flight. You cut the head off anyway, before cooking it, so why not? Most of us aren’t that good (I haven’t been shooting in 7 years, 11 months and two days, so I never will be).
Gun laws not silly enough for you? Money laws are as bad. If you are caught with “too much cash” the police are allowed to take it. You will have to post a 10% bond and then prove in court that you earned the money honestly. The US estate tax system is worse. It doesn’t even break even. It costs more to administer the US estate tax system than it collects in estate taxes (“death duties” for our British friends), so this is clearly not intended to pay for things the country “needs”, like forced busing, sensitivity-training, the fingerprinting of children, or M-113 armored personnel carriers for police departments. It is intended to punish families who are responsible with money.
If you were merely being satirical, and I missed it, I will admit here tha I owe you the opportunity to slap me once across each cheek with a rolled-up copy of The Onion.
If you were not, as John P.M. says, God Helps us all.
—MCS
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 11:01 PM on June 2
Body count escalating? Guess it’s time for our President to throw another fiesta. Maybe someone should clue him in on the goings-on in Mexico. I don’t think he knows. If he doesn’t, it’s unthinkable. If he does, and doesn’t care, it’s criminal. He never utters a word about the crime in that hell hole to our south. He celebrated Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo holiday with a party at the White House. After all, they’re his people. He celebrates this minor holiday more than Mexico does. We in Texas would love to see him retire to Acupulco, rather than Dallas.
Posted by June at 9:17 AM on June 3
To which all I can say is: “Keep up the good work, amigos.” Anyone really believing top Mexican are neither corrupt or ‘owned’ by the druglords would probably also be willing to purchase the Brooklyn Bridge, if offered.
Posted by Fed Up at 12:51 PM on June 3
And the mexican body count continues to rise,, and will be coming to your town very soon. Thanks to the liberals and the neo-cons.
Posted by at 2:36 PM on June 3
What should americas response be?
Perhaps make a movie about it all? One sure to win movie awards and stir up important dialoge.
A movie about the drug trade, where they only good-guy in the entire movie is a Mexican, and a black guy.
Wait, they already tried that (Traffic)
Posted by at 3:44 PM on June 3
It’s easy to win the drug war. All you have to do is secure the borders so that nothing gets through without our consent. Then no more drugs, and thus no drug cartels, and thus no crime in Mexico either.
Don’t be ridiculous. The government can’t even keep drugs out of its own prisons. You think it’s going to keep drugs out of the entire country? The drug war is unwinnable.
Posted by qwerty at 2:30 PM on June 4
The government not only can not keep drugs out of its own prisons, it isn’t even always successful at keeping the inmates from having guns.
Most of the guards in my unit were pretty relaxed about liquor. “If you are drunk,” one told us, “stay in your room.” We once had a “drunk front” blow through the whole unit when multiple batches got finished simultaneously. It tasted like cooking sherry, and was about as potent. As the consultant who advised them on breeding a better strain from the baker’s yeast they started with, I was given my cup for free.
There was plenty of marijuana there, too. I didn’t smoke it, but lots of guys did. Some guys used to yank the guards’ chains by smoking rollies made with tea and bible paper. It smells exactly the same as reefer. When they’d come up negative later after a UA test and a week in the hole, they had to be sent back to the unit, after a one-week vacation from work. Tobacco was sold at the commissary, and smoking was OK.
Marijuana will never be controllable in the US, as it grows here quite well. A militarized border would slow down the importation of cocaine, and raise the price. This would have the effect of increasing the level of violent crime associated with its distribution. On the other hand, heroin comes from Asia, and while air or ship travel complicates matters for the smugglers, we still have heroin addicts.
If R.J. Reynolds and Philipp Morris could package factory-rolled, filter-tipped joints, the marijuana smoker could then at least be assured that nothing really nasty had been added, like PCP.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:44 AM on June 5
Marijuana will never be controllable in the US, as it grows here quite well. A militarized border would slow down the importation of cocaine, and raise the price. This would have the effect of increasing the level of violent crime associated with its distribution. On the other hand, heroin comes from Asia, and while air or ship travel complicates matters for the smugglers, we still have heroin addicts.
Opium poppies can be grown here, too. Amren had a story a while back about Hmong immigrants growing poppies. I don’t know about coca, but with hydroponic technology, I’m pretty sure it could be grown here, too.
Even if the government could patrol every inch of border and shoreline (which it couldn’t) it still wouldn’t be the end of illicit drugs in this country. As you have pointed out, it would merely drive the price up even further, and with it, the level of prohibition-related violence.
Posted by qwerty at 2:57 PM on June 5