2010-01-03
Mexico Braces For Violence in 2010, Cracking Down on Drug Cartels
The 10th year of centuries really haven't been peaceful ones for Mexico. In 1810, activists launched a highly controversial war for independence which lasted for 11 years and saw the deaths of tens of thousands of people with many more being wounded, starved, and exploited. In 1910, Francisco Indalecio Madero launched the Mexican Revolution. After his assassination, a series of violent socialist, liberal, populist, and agrarian (pro-farmer) terrorist groups began forming in order to take control for themselves. The violence lasted for more than a decade with tens of thousands more being victimized by the bloodshed.
Now, it's 2010 and the people and government of Mexico are bracing themselves. As in the lead ups to the 1810 and 1910 revolutions, corruption is running rampant in the government, poverty is expanding infinitely faster than it can be remedied, the government is increasingly losing control in different parts of the country, and violent political extremist and criminal groups are beginning to fill the void left by the vanishing law and order.
Among the most obvious and notorious of these groups are the various drug cartels, which are not only terrorists creating chaos in Mexico, but also in the United States as they smuggle their drugs and the byproducts of those drugs (guns and gang violence) across Mexico's northern border. The US Government has been pressuring Mexico to crack down on the cartels for years. I've been linking the drug trade to terrorism since at least 2001, so this is not a huge leap in logic. Before, the corruption of the Mexican Government kept the cartels safe. However, things have gotten so bad that even the corrupt government can no longer turn a blind eye to their activities.
Starting in 2009 and working into this year, the Mexican Government has been cracking down on the cartels, with their most latest success coming against the Leyva Cartel. Mexican authorities arrested the cartel's leader, Carlos Beltran Leyva was arrested on Wednesday of last week. Carlos took over the cartel after his brother, Arturo, was gunned down in a shootout with Mexican police in mid-December.
Both times, it had been suggested that the US Government had tipped off Mexican Authorities to the location of the bosses.
These are undoubtedly great short-term victories for the the Mexican Government and our international War on Drugs. However, in the long-term, this crackdown may turn out to be an enormous mistake. As mentioned above, these large drug cartels are filling a power vacuum that Mexican authorities simply are unable to fill. As long as the drug cartels are in charge, there is an unholy stability. When you create a void, violence is almost guaranteed to result every time as different factions of that cartel, other cartels, and other groups try to fill the gap to best benefit themselves.
As Mexico's war against the cartels intensifies, the power vacuum the fallen cartel leaders leave behind risks throwing Mexico into another bloody revolution. If this happens, it is a sure bet that the violence is going to make it's way to the United States as decades of weak enforcement of border security and immigration laws have allowed Mexican gangs of every persuasion gain a foothold in the United States. And when clashes occur between the gang's parent organizations in Mexico, the gangs here are also going to start fighting.
The unlearned lesson of the story is that the United States needs to promote stable and non-corrupt government for our neighbors and friends, avoid corruption ourselves, and keep our borders protected so this sort of stuff doesn't happen. Hopefully, the Mexican government will find other ways to limit the influence of the cartels and slowly fill the voids with competent government leadership themselves. Otherwise, trouble is going to be brewing for the next several years and, for all of you non-interventionist and isolationist supporters out there, it WILL be our problem.
