harmonicminer

ThreatsWatch.Org: RapidRecon: Mexican Violence Continues to Unfold

Last week in Ciudad Juarez Mexico, four police officers were murdered in four separate attacks. This brings the 2008 murder toll in Juarez alone (across the border from El Paso) to 1,300; in all of Mexico, the death toll has reached more than 5,300 – more than twice 2007. This is based on government figures.

All of this happens in a year following the deployment of over 20,000 military troops across the country by President Calderon in an attempt to quell the violence of the drug cartels. The change in Administration will not change the danger posed to Americans by the continuing and expanding drug cartel violence. At the same time, reports of drug cartel-related violence crossing the border to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas continue. Further, the blending of the drug cartels with youth gangs now threatens to spread to border cities. The question of border (in)security is much more than the continuing flow of illegal immigrants.

If it wasn’t such a serious situation it might not be believable. In an unrelated crime, last week anti-kidnapping consultant Felix Batista was kidnapped in Mexico.

In high school, I lived for a year in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we used to go to Juarez just to do something different, see the world, etc. I’m thinking that wouldn’t be such a great idea this year. Mexico seems not only to be a third world country, it seems on the way to becoming another Somalia, characterized by factions at war, kidnapping, the inability of the central government to keep the factions under control, the whole nine yards.

Build the fence, Mr. President-elect. Yesterday.

Tags: Mexico

In Mexico, a boutique caters to the fearful high-fashion crowd with bullet proof clothing of all kinds.

There is a whole lot of shooting going on in Mexico today. Every day, the papers are full of victims, bodies lying out in grotesque poses with bullet wounds all about. Some are garden-variety crime victims, but the drug cartels that control much of the Mexican countryside are behind the overwhelming majority. They pay off politicians and police officers and act as shadow governments in town after town along their transit routes. Cross them, and they do not hesitate to pull the trigger.

The rash of drug violence, together with a surge in kidnappings for ransom, has shaken everyday Mexicans. Ask a stranger for directions on the street these days, and fear is the first emotion that crosses the person’s face. He or she might recover enough to describe how to go this way or that.

Studies have shown that more and more anxious Mexicans are pouring their money into defensive measures. Families and businesses across Mexico invest $18 billion in private security measures, a recent study by the Center for Economic Studies of the Private Sector found. Some people are trying to get their hands on weapons, which are tightly regulated here but widely available on the black market. To some, bulletproof fashion is the logical next step.

I could use some of this brand of haute couture myself. I go to faculty meetings. I have in-laws. I even go to Costco.

Weapons in Mexico are “tightly regulated but widely available on the black market”, and people are getting shot constantly, thus proving just how well gun control actually works.

In the meantime, Mexico’s government is so corrupt, at all levels, that I see no solution in sight that doesn’t involve a major revolution of some kind.

What I do know is that the USA can’t solve Mexico’s problems for it, and keeping illegal immigration fairly easy simply enables Mexico to maintain the status quo.

Tags: Mexico