the cartels, whatever their catalyst for formation was, are now political entities within Mexico akin to any group vying for power and control over whatever piece of the cake they can get.
they absolutely want political power (plenty of narco banners aiming for influence, plenty of self-instituted politics for local communities<see la familia michanoa>, and plenty of contributions). BUT, that doesn't change the fact that ending WoD ends their ability to wage such a disastrous war upon themselves, their society, and all the others who're sucked into this.
((to go further here would kind of necessitate talk on corruption in mx'can politics in general, but i'm getting the impression you'd already be wholly familiar w/ that. i'd actually cite that as a pretty strong factor in allowing this mess in the 1st place - drug-prohibition is teh meat/taters here, but there's a bunch of social dynamics necessary to allow such a situation to be realized.
I agree with you that the War on Drugs and its formal escalation (in 2006, I think) by Calderon, is a catalyst for almost all of the brutality we see today.
well, that's kinda what i meant (sry, was passing out as i finished my last one yesterday ;PP )
the WoD is the catalyst, felipe's escalation was just tossing gasoline on the fire.
i think of stories like kiki camarena, the dea agent who was tortured to death by the juarez cartel + military in the 80's (early 90's?). full-on torture, details just as sick as what we're seeing all the time nowadays. as long as we have WoD, this will happen. remove WoD and you remove this, enhance the WoD and you exacerbate it. (note that removing the WoD would end only drug-related violence, obviously, but i think my stance of "mexico cannot absorb as many criminals as the cartels would release upon termination" is clear. it's not a situation where all the cartels' operatives would just get into picking pockets and whatnot. Many(most?) of those involved are *extremely* poor, w/o the profits that the WoD creates, well, crime isn't profitable enough for them. almost makes me think of afghani farmers who're only harvesting dope because it's more profitable, they're not doing it to be criminals, they're doing it to keep food on the table)
However, I do not have the scientific standpoint that you have where the removal of the War on Drugs quite logically should remove the brutality. Over the long term, yes - absolutely.
why do you think the brutality would continue in the absence of prohibition?
when i think of the causes of these murders, they fall into a few main categories:
- competing cartels being killed
- police/military being killed (chiefly for interfering w/ routes and/or firefights w/ other cartels, but, to a lesser extent, also through plata/plumo<silver/lead> 'deals')
- collateral damages (innocent bystanders) due to the 1st two categories
I just cannot see how removing the WoD wouldn't remove the reasons to engage in these fights, it's not like the zeta/gulf cartels are ideological orgs who disagree, they're companies competing for a very lucrative 'contract', so to speak.
But in the short to medium term, a choice like legalization in the United States will cause the Cartels to continue to find ways to preserve their power and relevance within the Mexican economy by any means possible, which will cause serious problems for the majority of Mexicans.
fully agree w/ all of that. should add that they *won't* be able to preserve the power despite their attempts (see: mafia in the us), and that the serious problems these attempts cause would pale in comparison to the current problems already being experienced.
Your viewpoint that ideological struggles differ from this kind of beast in that ideological struggles are designed to be perpetual (i.e. 'perpetual war' concept) is flawed in that corporate structures are also perpetual entities designed to maintain their entity forever.
that wasn't how i meant it, that's my bad.
the perpetuity is extremely common in ideological struggles, but it's not a requirement.
the difference between a dto and a terrorist org is almost entirely profit motive. two people can do the same thing for their org, but if one's motivated by god/country, adn the other solely cash, then it's apples/oranges as far as 'the beast' itself. doesn't change what was being done, but has drastic implications for being able to stop it (we can choke off teh cartels w/ legalization - how do you placate al qaeda?)
But if the cost of labor in Mexico is cheaper with regard to marijuana production than it is in the United States, the Cartels will not magically give up their trade routes and power over the farmers' sales and distribution network.
i agree, BUT: if we cut the demand by just 50%, do you honestly see the violence
doubling? i don't. i do see it picking up, and that sucks, but if were to cut demand to, dunno, 10% of what it is now, i don't think we'll see a 10X rise in the violence.
Another misconception I have a feeling you have is that legalization will oversimplify the means by which marijuana, heroin, and cocaine can be imported and exported, causing the cartels to lose ground because they would no longer have a monopoly on the balls it takes to move these items around since now, hey, big, peaceful corporations can do it instead.
why would that be a misconception? (yes, i do believe that)
we can get coke, brown, whatever from many different countries, we don't have to deal w/ mexico (why would we? if we could fedex afghani dope, mx cannot really compete anymore. Actually, i'd go one further - the dynamics of the mx'can DTO's is, in large part, a hub for products coming from other places. Their meth could be avoided if their pseudoephedrine were purchased in china adn the meth cooked here at home. their coke could be avoided by dealing w/ the Northern south-american countries, their dope by dealing w/ afghanistan - they're not a particularly great production country, i'd rather be able to deal w/ colombia or afghanistan<strictly in terms of hypothetical, OTC drug purchases> than mexico anyways! even the advantages of mx'can pot are largely dissolved if prohibition is, as mexican pot is grown in response to the us's WoD.)
/fair-trade tan powder, anyone? ;PP
//i'm being 100% serious, hopefully you can explain to me why it'd be hard to acquire drugs w/ mx removed from the pic if there was just a free, open market.
But you're missing an important piece of the puzzle: taxes and tariffs. Legalization would allow legitimate corporations to step in and navigate the maze of marijuana production, export, and distribution, but they will be subject to playing by the rules: high taxes and the cost of administration related to every package that passes through customs. Mexican officials are pretty entrenched in a culture of bribery, and this would be reflected in the export and taxing policies that would be levied against legitimate organizations. This is where the cartels are in their zone - they understand how to work this kind of machine, and they have the added competency of being able to enforce their way of doing business with violence.
i foresee such issues, and they're part of what must be dealt with to make legalization work. i hope i haven't come across as believing legalization would be easy, or simple. it will be a fucking mess, but once it's settled, the drug issues will be what they should be (OD's, addiction, etc).
/wrt that situation tho, i cannot think of any ways to fix that. i think that is
a problem there(everywhere, actually) and will continue to be so, even for licit drugs. BUT- you knew this was coming ;P - these problems still pale in comparison to what we have now.
So, I think you can sum up my viewpoint as "Legalization would greatly reduce the brutality associated with the drug trade, but would have little effect on the Cartels' continued quest for financial security and power through other means.
again, 100% agreement with you here, so long as you're not asserting their continued quests would even compare to their current operations. (just look at it in strict financial terms - how on earth can you maintain such armies w/o prohibition? their enrollment #'s, and thus, their ability to wreak such havoc, would drastically decline (again: see 'mafia in the us')
I'm not sure it would play out that way ('mafia'), since i see a pretty realistic chance of the 'kennedy effect' if drugs were to be legalized.
They are well-armed and have a corporate culture that promotes getting what they want through violence and terror, and they would not hand over the reigns of the drug market easily should legalization occur.
no, but if nothing else, they've shown incredible adaptability. my feeling is that the important players would see how to remain in the market profitably, and, past the very beginning anyways, that would NOT be by trying to maintain an illicit, side-market to the open-market that legalization creates.
I'll try to talk about some of your other points later today.
don't worry about missing points, too much stuff to catch everything here ;PP
