What The Hell Is Going On Down There?

In a comment to an earlier post, Jeff from A Nod to the Gods asked "What the hell is going on down there? 23 Bodies...again?"

He was referring to a recent outbreak of violence in the Texas-Mexico border town of Nuevo Laredo. Twenty-three bodies were found there yesterday, and fourteen more a short while before that.

Well...

As regular visitors here know, I live in Central Texas but work in Laredo several days a week. I have an office and apartment down there less than 10 miles from where the bodies are piling up. As with most large-scale problems, there is not one simple cause or easy solution. But here's my Reader's Digest version.

Mexico was ruled by one political party (The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional, commonly referred to as the PRI) for many decades. The PRI and the drug cartels reached an informal agreement among themselves. The cartels each got control over certain territories and smuggling routes. They would keep violence at a minimum, wouldn't go against the PRI, and generally would refrain from rocking the boat. In return, the PRI would turn a blind eye towards the cartels' activities. That arrangement worked well for all parties for a long time.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, the PRI suffered a series of political reversals. The Mexican government under the PRI had become so corrupt and ineffectual that people finally said "Enough is enough" and voted in a more conservative right-wing party - the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN). In 2006 PAN candidate Felipe Calderón was elected president of Mexico. Calderón quickly initiated a major federal campaign against the cartels, utilizing both the federal police and the military (Mexico's local and regional law enforcement agencies are hopelessly corrupt and riddled with cartel employees and informants).

While all this political upheaval was going on, the cartels were becoming increasingly restless. Violence grew as the cartels intensified their struggles over territory. (In an interesting example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, the Mexican cartels gained power and stature as U.S. and Colombian efforts to dismantle the Colombian cartels became more successful.) As the cartels' internecine conflicts became more frequent, a new group came into existence - Los Zetas.

The Zetas were originally a small band of Mexican Army deserters and former special forces operatives. They began as hired guns - mercenaries who would commit acts of violence for the highest bidder. As they grew in size and power they began to compete with the more established cartels. In other words, they were the new kids on the block trying to muscle in on existing rackets.

So we have a perfect storm of sorts. A new federal government waging war on the cartels, the cartels fighting amongst themselves, and a new group trying to claim a place at the table. Which leads us to yesterday's bodies.

Gangland killers hanged nine people side-by-side from an overpass at a busy interchange in Nuevo Laredo on Friday, and stuffed 14 decapitated bodies into a minivan left in the heart of the busiest trade route on the U.S.-Mexico border ... Some of those hanged were bloodied and battered, and appeared to have been tortured.

"This is how I am going to finish off all the fools you send to heat up the plaza," read a banner on the overpass addressed to the Gulf Cartel, which is waging war with the Zetas gang that controls the city. "We'll see you around, you bunch of parasites."

... the latest slaughter came barely three weeks after 14 other brutalized bodies were found, also in a van, behind Nuevo Laredo's city hall. The heads of the 14 bodies found Friday were left in ice chests at basically the same place.

The banner left with the bodies on April 18, purportedly signed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, vowed that the gangster - considered Mexico's most powerful crime boss - was taking back Nuevo Laredo from the Zetas, and was now aligned with their Gulf Cartel enemies.

"They're fighting for it again," Peter Hanna, a retired FBI agent who spent much of his career investigating the Gulf Cartel, said of the new Nuevo Laredo violence. "It is a huge drug corridor, they have tons of methods of crossing it into the United States in Laredo."

Hanna speculates that Guzman may be hoping to gain control of Nuevo Laredo before the July 1 presidential elections in Mexico, which seem poised to return the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power.

The PRI, which enjoyed single party rule in Mexico for most of the past century, governs Tamaulipas state, bordering Texas from Nuevo Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico, as well as neighboring Nuevo Leon and Coahuila states.

President Felipe Calderon's militarized campaign against organized crime shattered tacit agreements between officials and gang bosses across Mexico, Hanna said. In moving now, Guzman may be trying to establish firm control before Calderon's successor takes office Dec. 1, in hopes of reaching similar deals.

Beheading, dismemberment and other brutality has become commonplace in Mexico's drug wars.

"They are trying to intimidate their rivals and the local population," Hanna said of gruesome displays such as Friday's.

"The whole idea is that if you cooperate with the wrong side you can be killed. People are scared to death to do anything but try to avoid these people and avoid getting involved in one way or another."

On a personal note, the paragraph above is frightfully true. The sister of a friend of mine lives in Nuevo Laredo. She was visiting her priest, who runs a charity for the handicapped, when several masked gunmen burst into the church. They tied up the priest and the other people there, then began beating the priest while questioning him regarding the whereabouts of another man they suspected of informing on them. Fortunately that was the extent of it, although needless to say the people involved were terrified.

It's gotten so bad that ordinary people with no connection get drawn into the conflict. The family of one of my students had a small painting business across the border. They did a job for someone affiliated with one of the cartels. The next day they were visited by gunmen who threatened them with death if they worked for that person again. When he called them back the following week with another job, the father said "no, thanks." The next day - you guessed it - another visit from gunmen, this time from the other side. The day after that the entire family fled across the river, where they are now living here illegally. That's one reason I have a little sympathy for immigrants who come here with a sincere desire to make things better for their families. If I was in their situation I'd do the same thing. But that's a topic for another day.

The cartels routinely spray bullets into crowded restaurants, nightclubs, even shopping malls, when they are after one target. The could care less about 'collateral damage' - innocent men, women, and children who are gunned down in the crossfire. They even shoot up drug rehab clinics.

Another favorite target is reporters (I know, I know, there's a bunch of 'journalists' here in the U.S. that many people would like to see made targets of as well, but IMO that's a little extreme. We should just ship them off to California and build a fence around it.) 

More Journalists Killed in Mexico

Police found four tortured and dismembered bodies in Veracruz, including those of two working photojournalists and one former one Thursday, days after a correspondent for a national Mexican magazine was murdered in that same Gulf Coast state.

... The drug-cartel violence has led many journalists to stop covering news related to drugs and crime.

Mexico's broken down and corrupt judicial system means that almost all such crimes go unpunished.

..."A large part of Mexico's population is getting its news, written or broadcast, by people who are afraid of telling the truth for fear of their lives. If the public is getting only information that has been approved by crime cartels, what does this tell you about the future of democracy in Mexico?"

So that's what's going on down there. It's a mess. There's so much more that factors into the situation, but at this point you're probably tired of reading about it. So I'll just add one more comment.

IMO some of the blame falls on the U.S. If you believe in the law of supply and demand, then our national demand for drugs plays a major role in making the supply profitable. I've got no problem with people smoking, snorting, or injecting whatever they want. After all, it's their body. But I do have a problem with people who use illegal drugs without acknowledging that they are at least partially responsible for what's happening south of the border.

I left Laredo on Thursday for the summer. I don't have to go back there until the start of the Fall semester, sometime around the end of August. I'm fortunate, in that I can leave the violence behind. But I feel for the folks who have to live there full-time. There are decent, honest, hard-working people in Mexico.

Sadly, they are fast becoming an endangered species...