Dios Ayuda Mexico.........(Part 2)

Links: A. What Is Happening In Mexico
           B. Mexico's Own Black Widow?

We all have certain phrases that really touch a nerve.  One that really gets my eggs boiling is, "if it weren't for Americans taking drugs, then poor farmers in South America would be growing something else."  Bullshit.  The next time someone gives you that crap, ask them if they've ever seen an addict.  Addicts in America keep the drug trade alive, not the swinging 1970's Studio 54 crowd.  They're all dead.  I prefer to reverse that particular argument.  If narco-traffickers and drug growers in Afghanistan and South America were all dead, our children wouldn't have the temptation of easy drugs, and early addicts would find it easier to quit than to find another hit.  A ready supply of cheap drugs makes it too easy to become an addict in America, and difficult to stop.  I'm not a junkie, and you probably aren't either, so if we disagree, that's fine.  Either way, the reality is that illegal narcotics remains big business and is a powerful force in the corrupt society that is modern Mexico.

In yesterday's post, we were discussing how the discovery of oil in Mexico led to an economic boom that created a true middle class for the first time in the country's history.  Interestingly enough, at about the same time the middle-class was on the rise, and the nacro-traffickers were establishing a presence, the Mexicans decided to experiment with multi-party Democracy.  They elected as President, the business-friendly Partido Accion Nacional: National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Vicente Fox.  Both Fox and his PAN

Vicente Fox
55th President of Mexico

successor Felipe Calderon made very public attempts at combating the presence of narco-traffickers in Mexico.  But the government was impotent.  The local police, the state police, the Mexican FBI, the Mexican DEA, all became poisoned with corruption.  Most people in Mexico, including law enforcement officers, don't make a heck of a lot of money.  It is hard to turn down cash; especially when you know that everyone else is on the take.  Eventually the narcotics gangs began to fight with each other over territory (the Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel are a few nasty examples).  If it weren't so tragic and the human cost so high, it would be ironically amusing.  One Law Enforcement Agency that was on the narco-gang payroll would attack another law Enforcement Agency that was being bribed by the competition.  This type of warfare ended up shutting down the large tourist district of Nuevo Laredo.  And the military was certainly no exception, as numerous Army Generals ended up on the take as well.  No joke: an Army General ordered his troops to disrupt the smuggling of a large shipment of marijuana across the river by a rival organization.  This organization had the Federal Police on the payroll, so before the night was up, the cops were shooting at the soldiers!  But just as it appeared that the situation was about to explode, everything seemed to die down.  The shootings in border cities became less frequent, the tossing of bags of heads into wedding parties seldom occurred, and the PRI retook control of the Presidency.

The current PRI president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, was elected on a platform of reform.  Unless the NY Times or Washington Post were in the room, he seldom discussed

Current President of Mexico,
Enrique Peña Nieto

the issue of the narco-trafficking gangs that veined throughout Mexico, and instead he addressed the never-ending issue of sharing the resources of Mexico with all Mexicans.  This message resonated with many Mexicans, who began to see the problem with the drug traffickers as a Norteño or Gringo headache.  Nieto tells a good story, and he promised the Mexican people that the PRI crooks of the past had been reformed.  The people of Mexico, longing for the peace and consistency of the past, bought it hook, line and sinker.  Although stories like the one detailed in the links continue to happen, they do seem to be less frequent.  An elderly Mexican woman told me last month that, "all the drug smugglers are in Sinaloa, Guerrero and the Distrito Federal", and that traveling in Mexico was safe again.  I'm from South Texas; I speak border Spanish, know good Mexican food when I smell it, and know the value of a hard day's work to the average Mexican.  I'm forced to agree with the elderly lady.  I don't know if its because the Mexican police finally caught the worst of the bad guys (I thought he was caught last week, or the month before, or last May, or.......) or its because all the blood-letting was bad for business.  I'm not stupid enough to believe for a second that the narcotics gangs are leaving town.  I could never understand why the 10 to 15 percent (and the new and growing middle class) did not come to some arrangement with the cartels: you do your work at night, and we'll keep the trains running on time during the day.  Nieto has promised all sorts of reforms that no doubt will cut into the profits for the 10 to 15 percent, but maybe they've decided to share a bit more than usual.  It's human nature to find resolution when everyone's paycheck is on the line.  I'm going to give real consideration to the idea that the 10 to 15 percent, the middle class as represented by Nieto, and the narcotics gangs have come to some understanding.  If it means peace, most Mexicans won't ask any questions.  Hell, at this point, neither will I.            

Dios Ayuda Mexico...........

Links: A. What Is Happening In Mexico
           B. Mexico's Own Black Widow?

The links above refer to 43 missing male students from Ayotzinapa rural teachers college in Igualpa, Guerrero, Mexico.  The platform of the school was decidedly leftist, which probably didn't endear the students to the corrupt capitalist gangsters that actually ran the city of Iguala.

A few hours south of Mexico City, Iguala is situated in the state of Guerrero, which is much more famous as the home of Acapulco.  On the night of Friday, September 26, a group of the students rode into Iguala with the intention to demonstrate against discriminatory hiring practices and also to solicit funds for a protest march.  Something went badly wrong, the police got involved, and six people were killed.  Some of the students made it back to the school, but 43 did not, and have not been seen since.  Accusations have been made against the mayor of Iguala and his wife, who have conveniently disappeared.  And the search for evidence near Iguala yielded at least twelve mass graves of unidentified bodies, none of whom turn out to be the missing students (so then, who are these poor souls?).  Interestingly enough, the mayor and his wife were members of the political party in control of Iguala and Guerrero: the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica - the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), which is the decidedly leftist force in Mexican politics.  You would think that they would have embraced these young men, not erased them in the prime of their lives.

This is a heartbreaking story, but Mexico has heartbreaking stories around every bend.  During my CIA days, I had reason to be in El Paso for a meeting with the local FBI and various Mexican Law

Maquiladora workers

Enforcement Agencies (Mexico used to have only the State Police, the local Police, and their version of the FBI.  It didn't take long for Mexico to copy her big brother up north, and now we have Mexican Law Enforcement for every little thing you can imagine...not that it makes a damn bit of difference).  The meeting in El Paso had to do with the seemingly-endless tragedy of the missing young girls of Juarez, most of them workers from the Maquiladoras (assembly-line type factories set in the industrial sectors of the community).  To this day, I don't believe that the case has been solved, and I imagine the number of murdered or missing girls must be over a thousand.  Its difficult to fathom that this unimaginable carnage is taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Today is not the day for me to tackle the complex issue of the entirety of Mexico.  In fact, if I wanted to do the subject justice, I would need to take at least five years away from all other obligations, and be left alone in a cabin somewhere so no one could interrupt.  When necessary, I can usually simplify the issue by saying, "Young Mexicans need to stay in Mexico, band together, butcher the narco-traffickers and thieving politicians, and take control of their country, which happens to be blessed with tremendous wealth and bounty."  This is usually the argument I drag out when discussing the issue of illegal immigration.  My suggestion makes complete sense, if you forget to take into account that the Mexican revolutionaries of today would be facing not one, not two, but a dozen or so heavily armed organizations: the narco-traffickers.

How does the modern state of Mexico function?  In the past, before the arrival of the narco-trafficking virus, one party, representing roughly 10 to 15 percent of the population, kept things going.  The Partido Revolucionario Institucional: the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) made sure that the trains ran on time, that the parks were kept clean, and that rich got richer and the poor stayed poor.  That 10 to 15 percent live a very enviable lifestyle. This includes many families from the Monterrey and Mexico City areas who can trace their roots directly to Spain, with no creole "branches".  When I was in junior high school in Texas, I remember hearing about wealthy Mexican families who would send their children to schools in the United States.  Some of the more popular choices of my era included Central Catholic High School in San Antonio, the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen (MMA), the Texas Military Institute (TMI), St. Mary's Hall, and Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio (go Mules!).  The chosen few, the 10 to 15 percent, could be found directing Mexico's telephone company, or possibly the national bank.

Then two events changed everything: Jose Lopez Portillo, PRI President from 1976 to 1982, single-handedly discovered Mexico's oil wealth one day while playing golf (at least

Jose Lopez Portillo
51st Pres. of Mexico

that's how he remembered it).  The wealth that was generated from oil income was too much for even the covetous and stingy 10 to 15 percent, and the Mexican economy took off.  Some of the wealth that was generated found its way to average Mexicans and a real middle-class was born.  This middle class enjoyed living in the modern ages, and demanded the latest in electronics, communication, and transportation.  Sorry to bring everyone down, but we must add the last ingredient into our Mexico historical smoothie: narco-traffickers.  The Colombian narco-traffickers decided that it would be much more profitable to establish a presence in Mexico as opposed to coordinating the flow of cocaine and marijuana from Cali, Medellin, and Cartagena.  This effort at relocation quickly got out of hand because the Cali and Medellin Cartels weren't the only players in the game and soon everyone wanted to monitor the flow of their valuable merchandise as it made its way to American nostrils.

These two events, the birth of the middle class and the arrival of the narco-traffickers, coincided with a rise in multi-party democracy in Mexico.  The resulting socio-political cocktail left the country reeling in chaos like an angry drunk and even today it is still in a bit of a hang over.   But that's a topic for mañana . . .