The political economy of Mexico's drug war. THE MEXICAN drug war is a killing machine. The level of violence and slaughter is similar to conventional warfare. In just six years, 7.
More than 2. 0,0. A major investigation into narcofosas(mass graves) in Mexico by the magazine Milenio found the corpses of 2.
Entire cities and towns have erupted into war zones chock- full with military checkpoints and drug cartel roadblocks. Armed with military grade weapons including grenade launchers, the drug gangs are an equal match for Mexican soldiers and police. Drug cartel sicarios (assassins), the military, and police have committed atrocities and violated human rights countless times. Dismembered body parts are left on streets and found decomposing in barrels of acid. Dead bodies with mouths duct taped shut hang from busy commuter bridges.
Women are raped and murdered with impunity, and journalists who expose law enforcement corruption are kidnapped and killed. The drug war takes no prisoners. This bloody war, ostensibly to rid the country of illegal drugs and drug trafficking, has been a grisly failure. Mexico continues to be a major exporter of heroin and marijuana and a central transshipment point for cocaine from Andean South America bound for the United States.
Not-for-profit publishing house with titles on educational, cultural, ethnic, and community subjects.
Drugs cross the heavily fortified US- Mexican border far more easily than do migrants seeking work in the United States. The power of the drug cartels to kill, corrupt, and elude capture has grown exponentially as have their profits.
Former president Felipe Calderón unleashed la guerra contra las drogas upon his inauguration in 2. For six years as the death toll climbed and drugs flowed unimpeded through the country, El Presidente insisted that the war was being won. Calderón had no sympathy for those murdered in drug war violence. He called fifteen teenagers who were mowed down at a party by Juárez cartel hitmen “thugs.” In fact, they were students and athletes. Watch Electric Slide HDQ. More than anyone else in Mexico, Calderón has blood on his hands.
He leaves behind a country where torture, mass executions, and beheadings are the new normal to teach at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge. The drug warriors in Mexico are junior partners in the war on drugs. It is on the other side of the border, thousands of miles away in Washington, DC and Langley, Virginia where the senior partners call the shots. The drug warriors in the White House, the Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have blood on their hands, too. For almost a century, American politicians and federal antidrug agencies have dictated drug policy to their neighbor. Coercing Mexico to enforce total drug prohibition has been a central and enduring source of tension between the two countries.
The border between Mexico and the United States spans six Mexican states and four US states, and has over twenty commercial railroad crossings. There are forty- five Mexico- US crossings with 3. According to the Migration Information Source, in 2. Border city twinnings—municipalities connected by one or more legal border crossings—dot the nearly two- thousand mile border. Sister cities Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and El Paso in Texas are on major drug transit routes. Two rivers, the Rio Bravo and the Colorado, and two deserts, the Sonoran and the Chihuahuan, straddle both countries.
"Solving 9/11 Ends the War" - Alex Jones Channel steals my tour slogan without going anywhere near the essence of my research which explains what this slogan means. Tom Hayden, Self: This Brave Nation: Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein. Tom Hayden was one of the most important radicals of the 1960s, who as a college student at the. Get up to the minute breaking political news and in-depth analysis on ABCNews.com. You got that right. I just watched Sergeant York which is a typical pre-war propaganda movie for WWII made in 1941 before we entered into the war.
The drug war passes through this porous and dangerous, remote and urban geography. Nature has always conspired to defeat attempts to eliminate trafficking between the two countries. It is a mathematical impossibility. The United States has never respected Mexican sovereignty and the right to self- determination. American armies invaded Mexico in 1.
The US annexed the states called Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Then in 1. 91. 4, the US invaded again. The military was sent to the port of Veracruz during the Mexican Revolution to aid Venustiano Carranza in his fight against Pancho Vila and Emiliano Zapata.
Since the 1. 90. 0s, the United States has intervened covertly and overtly to enforce drug prohibition south of the border. Mexico hasn’t been allowed to develop an independent approach to drug use within its borders nor to international drug trafficking.
Prohibitionist drug policies have transformed Mexico into a major cultivator, exporter, and transshipment point for illicit drugs that supply the US market. History of prohibition. Up until the early 1. United States and could be purchased at pharmacies and stores.
A steady series of laws passed in the United States made all drug use illegal. The 1. 90. 9 Opium Exclusion Act barred the importation of opium for smoking. Initially, the law applied only to the opium processed for smoking that was favored by Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. In 1. 91. 4, the Harrison Act was passed prohibiting all non- medicinal use of opium, morphine, and cocaine, effectively outlawing the use of medicinal morphine that white, middle- class women used in products like Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne. After a protracted national struggle between the women’s temperance movement and pro- alcohol- consumption groups, the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, was passed, making the production, importation, and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal.
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1. The federal government had effectively banned the use of all mind- altering substances, but Americans weren’t having it. Millions ignored the new vice laws, and black markets were quickly created to supply people with alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. Prohibition caused initial shortages that had the effect of dramatically boosting drug prices. The super- profits to be made ensured not only the survival of the black market, but also that new suppliers would fill the vacuum.
Mexico’s proximity to the United States made it an easy source and traffickers rushed to supply their neighbor with illicit narcotics and alcohol. Exports of Mexican opium, heroin, and marijuana for US consumption steadily increased as a result of Prohibition. The Mexican border cities of Baja, Ciudad Juárez, and Tijuana became legendary drug tourist destinations for Americans.
One observer noted, “Ciudad Juárez is the most immoral, degenerate, and utterly wicked place I have ever seen or heard of in my travels. Murder and robbery are everyday occurrences, and gambling, dope selling and using, drinking to excess, and sexual vices are continuous. Watch Freeheld Streaming. Watch Lore Full Movie there. It is a Mecca for criminals and degenerates from both sides of the border.”7. In order to enforce Prohibition, the American state created new law enforcement agencies that over time have become politically and financially invested in the continuation of prohibitionist drug policies (as well as the continuation of those activities they are ostensibly designed to prohibit), despite their demonstrable failure. All across the country, customs agents and antinarcotics squads raided opium dens and “speakeasy” bars, shut down pharmacies and arrested smugglers, dealers, and drug users.