The recent US delegation visit to Mexico has once more stirred debate on Mexico’s war on drugs. Commentators, notably Jorge Castañeda, have used the occasion to repeat claims that the drug war is President Calderón’s fault, and headway in defeating the cartels should include “some sort of tacit deal with some cartels” while extending “the full force of the law” to others.
Castañeda’s views, still wrongheaded in my opinion, are at least softening; he acknowledges some government successes and has become less strident in pinning blame exclusively on the Mexican president.
A more important trend is being exposed: Mexico is being ravaged by hundreds of drug gangs. These outfits are increasingly accounting for murders in northern Mexico, and they are not apart of Mexico’s known drug syndicates. As pointed out by Charles Bowden in his forthcoming book Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, there are between 500-900 gangs operating from Juárez. Bowden faults both Mexican and American policies for the extent of the drug violence, but emphasizes the role of the military industrial complex in the US in supplying the arms used by the gangsters in Mexico, and the army.
This adds an altogether different dimension to the quandary. Policies aimed at dismantling the so-called cartels can notch success after success, as they have done, but produce no overall reduction in violence. Violence is spinning off from the major syndicates, becoming more decentralized, with varying objectives. Roving gangs solicit hits starting at $20, their violence uncoordinated by a kingpin’s decree. And in resolving this problem Castañeda and Bowden are both right: the Mexican army is ill suited to be a police force.
