Despite Mexico’s strengthening democracy and booming economy, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, the country’s security crisis rages on. Fifty thousand people have been killed in the past five years due to drug and organized crime-related violence.
Mexico’s Drug War. CFR (Published on Feb 11, 2013)
«The sense of fear and the sense of helplessness has extended beyond the areas that are mostly affected by the increasing violence,» says Alejandro Hope, a former Mexican intelligence officer. «It has changed the national conversation in Mexico, and it has changed the way Mexicans think of their country.»
The crisis has been driven by many factors, experts say, including the Mexican government’s offensive against drug-trafficking organizations, which began in December 2006. And while the country has enjoyed steady economic growth in recent years, economic inequality has left millions of Mexicans on the margins. «Those are the types of populations that the drug cartels or gangs look to and often recruit from,» says Shannon K. O’Neil, CFR’s Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies. Meanwhile, Mexico’s weak security and justice institutions, prone to inefficiency and corruption, have been «quite unable to deal with this level of violence,» argues Hope.
While Mexico is unlikely to become a truly failed state, its drug war has had a destabilizing impact on the region, says Stewart M. Patrick, director of CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance Program. Yet the international community has done very little to address Mexico’s security crisis.
The United States can play a big role in helping Mexico, says O’Neil, by improving border security, cracking down on money laundering and gun trafficking, and also by embarking on «a real discussion» about drug demand in the United States, which is a major market for Mexico’s drug trade.
Con el título A Chicago, «El Chapo» détrône Al Capone et devient l’ennemi public n° 1, Le Monde informaba el 15 de febrero de 2013 de una decisión, para muchos sorprendente, de las autoridades de Chicago:
Le trafiquant de drogue mexicain Joaquin «El Chapo» Guzman a été désigné officiellement ennemi public n° 1 par la ville de Chicago, un «titre» qui n’avait pas été décerné depuis 1930, quand Al Capone faisait trembler la ville en pleine prohibition.
«El Chapo» -«El Pequeño» en argot mexicano- dirige el poderoso cartel de Sinaloa y, según un comunicado de la «Chicago Crime Commission» , ha sido acusado de haber utilizado Chicago como centro de distribución de su negocio por el Midwest.
Según la Comisión, establecida en 1919, Guzmán, fugado de una cárcel mexicana en 2001 y considerado uno de los fugitivos más peligrosos y ricos del mundo (en más de mil millones de dólares calcula Forbes su fortuna), ha traficado en Chicago entre 1.500 y 2.000 kilos de cocaína por mes y ha sido acusado, junto a otras 35 personas, en la capital económica de Illinois y del Midwest de tráfico internacional de drogas.
En un informe publicado el 18 de mayo de 2012, Le rapport de forces des cartels de narcos mexicains, el mismo diario francés concluía que los carteles mexicanos de la droga estaban en plena recomposición desde diez años atrás tanto por la ofensiva del Gobierno mexicano contra sus intereses como por las disensiones internas. ¿Significa esto que se han debilitado? En absoluto:
Ce n’est pas pour autant qu’ils ont été affaiblis. Pour Michael Braun, un ancien haut responsable de l’Agence antidrogue américain, il ne fait aucun doute que les cartels mexicains sont actuellement les groupes criminels les plus sophistiqués et dangereux de la planète, capables d’opérer rapidement en cellules autonomes et d’investir des millions de dollars en corruption et en achat de technologie dernier cri.
Leur implantation au sein de la société mexicaine n’a pas non plus été résolue. Selon une estimation d’Edgardo Buscaglia, président de l’Instituto de Acción Ciudadana et un des spécialistes mondiaux du narcotrafic, près de 71 % du territoire mexicain est sous le contrôle des cartels, qui établissent des «gouvernements paralèlles» et contribuent à «l’afghanisation» du pays.
El 25 de febrero de 2013 STRATFOR subía a la red un análisis sobre los narcos mexicanos titulado The Evolution of Mexico’s Cartels. El análisis se abría con una pregunta sobre el origen del narcotráfico entre México y los EE.UU.: When did drug smuggling on the U.S. – Mexico border begin?
Scott Stewart: Well one of the things that we have to understand is that wherever there is a border, there is always going to be smuggling. And really the history of smuggling along the U.S.-Mexican border goes all the way back to the establishment of the border. There’s always been a commerce there of weapons, of alcohol going back and forth and then of course illegal drugs. We really saw drugs get going in the early 1900s when the U.S. began to clamp down on marijuana. And so a lot of these Mexican gangs that had smuggled other items started smuggling marijuana across the U.S. border. Then later, in the ’50s and ’60s and into the ’70s, as the U.S. appetite for harder drugs increased, we saw the Mexicans get involved in smuggling things like heroin, pharmaceuticals and even cocaine
How the Mexican Drug Trade Thrives on Free Trade http://thenat.in/1sjsnsJ