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Will Mexico’s Surreal 'Drug War' Ever End?
Jeremy Kryt
04.01.16
A boy cries over the coffin of Patrick Machado, 16, one of six teenagers found dead in Mesquita, during their funeral in Nilopolis September 11, 2012.
As the murder rate in Mexico rises yet again, it’s time to admit current policies aren’t working—and start looking for new solutions.
SIERRA MADRE DEL SUR, Mexico — “Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war,” wrote Norman Mailer in Armies of the Night. That phrase, applied to Vietnam almost 50 years ago, has come back into my head any number of times during the eight months of the last year I’ve spent covering the Mexican drug war.
For most of that time I’ve been on the front lines of the conflict—often in and around the sun-scorched and cartel-dominated valley called Tierra Caliente—where the daily suspension of one’s reasoning faculties can be a useful coping mechanism.
Even so, at times I’ve found it very hard to support the Mexican government’s increasingly surreal approach to drug war tactics and strategy.
For example, on a recent trip to the village of Dos Aguas, high in the Sierra Madre mountains of Michoacán state, I was told by locals that there were no police or military forces present in the vicinity at all. Not even a sheriff. The town had formerly been protected by a group of vigilantes known as autodefensas, but the state government ordered the group to disband last February under penalty of arrest.
Now that the vigilantes are gone, Dos Aguas is run by a chieftain from the Knights Templar cartel, who calls himself “El Tena.” He travels the mountains in a caravan of more than a dozen trucks, led by a pick-up with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in the bed. El Tena goes where he likes and does what he pleases—including running meth labs and illegal logging operations in the sierra.
When I visited the nearest army base, in the municipal seat of Coalcomán, I asked the commanding officer about El Tena. Why, given his well-known whereabouts, had no operations been undertaken to apprehend him? The CO told me I’d have to put in a request to the army chief of staff in Mexico City for any such questions. Two weeks and many phone calls and emails later, I’m still waiting for an answer, and El Tena is still on the loose.
In addition to disbanding cartel-fighting vigilantes in Michoacán, the federal government is also in the process of shutting down local police forces, or Fuerzas Rurales, in an effort to replace them with state troopers. In the town of Aquila, just an hour west of Coalcomán, the decree comes despite the overwhelming objection from townsfolk, who claim the Rurales are the only ones capable of protecting them from the predations of regional cartels.
“The state police sent a message saying we had to come to a meeting and give up our guns,” says Rurales commander Hector Zepeda. “But we’re not going to the meeting, because the town council didn’t authorize it. We work for the community, and we don’t take orders from anyone else.”
The disconnect between branches of law enforcement is weirdly normal in Mexico, where state and federal authorities are generally considered corrupt until proven otherwise.
“The state wants to assign their own officers, who don’t know anything about the town,” says Zepeda, who I’ve personally seen risk his life going up against the cartels in the past. “They had their chance to protect the people, and they never did anything. That’s why the autodefensas formed in the first place!”
The half-tragic, half-farcical nature of the drug war also makes it tough to (reasonably) justify the $2.5 billion in military aid that Washington has blindly thrown at Mexico since 2008, as part of what’s called the Merida Initiative.
Those questionably spent billions also mean Uncle Sam is complicit in the bloodshed south of the border. And plenty of blood has already been shed.
From 2007 to 2014 the crime wars of Mexico claimed more lives than the combined toll of the wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. More than 164,000 Mexicans have been killed or disappeared in the conflict, and the extreme and chronic violence, coupled with great poverty, also drives much of the illegal immigration that Donald Trump and his supporters are so worried about.
The killing, moreover, shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
continued here http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/02/will-mexico-s-surreal-drug-war-ever-end.html
Jeremy Kryt
04.01.16
A boy cries over the coffin of Patrick Machado, 16, one of six teenagers found dead in Mesquita, during their funeral in Nilopolis September 11, 2012.
As the murder rate in Mexico rises yet again, it’s time to admit current policies aren’t working—and start looking for new solutions.
SIERRA MADRE DEL SUR, Mexico — “Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war,” wrote Norman Mailer in Armies of the Night. That phrase, applied to Vietnam almost 50 years ago, has come back into my head any number of times during the eight months of the last year I’ve spent covering the Mexican drug war.
For most of that time I’ve been on the front lines of the conflict—often in and around the sun-scorched and cartel-dominated valley called Tierra Caliente—where the daily suspension of one’s reasoning faculties can be a useful coping mechanism.
Even so, at times I’ve found it very hard to support the Mexican government’s increasingly surreal approach to drug war tactics and strategy.
For example, on a recent trip to the village of Dos Aguas, high in the Sierra Madre mountains of Michoacán state, I was told by locals that there were no police or military forces present in the vicinity at all. Not even a sheriff. The town had formerly been protected by a group of vigilantes known as autodefensas, but the state government ordered the group to disband last February under penalty of arrest.
Now that the vigilantes are gone, Dos Aguas is run by a chieftain from the Knights Templar cartel, who calls himself “El Tena.” He travels the mountains in a caravan of more than a dozen trucks, led by a pick-up with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in the bed. El Tena goes where he likes and does what he pleases—including running meth labs and illegal logging operations in the sierra.
When I visited the nearest army base, in the municipal seat of Coalcomán, I asked the commanding officer about El Tena. Why, given his well-known whereabouts, had no operations been undertaken to apprehend him? The CO told me I’d have to put in a request to the army chief of staff in Mexico City for any such questions. Two weeks and many phone calls and emails later, I’m still waiting for an answer, and El Tena is still on the loose.
In addition to disbanding cartel-fighting vigilantes in Michoacán, the federal government is also in the process of shutting down local police forces, or Fuerzas Rurales, in an effort to replace them with state troopers. In the town of Aquila, just an hour west of Coalcomán, the decree comes despite the overwhelming objection from townsfolk, who claim the Rurales are the only ones capable of protecting them from the predations of regional cartels.
“The state police sent a message saying we had to come to a meeting and give up our guns,” says Rurales commander Hector Zepeda. “But we’re not going to the meeting, because the town council didn’t authorize it. We work for the community, and we don’t take orders from anyone else.”
The disconnect between branches of law enforcement is weirdly normal in Mexico, where state and federal authorities are generally considered corrupt until proven otherwise.
“The state wants to assign their own officers, who don’t know anything about the town,” says Zepeda, who I’ve personally seen risk his life going up against the cartels in the past. “They had their chance to protect the people, and they never did anything. That’s why the autodefensas formed in the first place!”
The half-tragic, half-farcical nature of the drug war also makes it tough to (reasonably) justify the $2.5 billion in military aid that Washington has blindly thrown at Mexico since 2008, as part of what’s called the Merida Initiative.
Those questionably spent billions also mean Uncle Sam is complicit in the bloodshed south of the border. And plenty of blood has already been shed.
From 2007 to 2014 the crime wars of Mexico claimed more lives than the combined toll of the wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. More than 164,000 Mexicans have been killed or disappeared in the conflict, and the extreme and chronic violence, coupled with great poverty, also drives much of the illegal immigration that Donald Trump and his supporters are so worried about.
The killing, moreover, shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
continued here http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/02/will-mexico-s-surreal-drug-war-ever-end.html
