This year, through mid-November, there have been 4,300-plus drug-related deaths in Mexico, compared with 2,500 in 2007. Edgar Millán Gómez, who oversaw the joint efforts of the army and federal police, was assassinated in May in his home in Mexico City. Roberto Velasco Bravo, a federal chief of criminal investigations, was shot in the head a week earlier. The narcotraficantes have infiltrated the highest levels of law enforcement, including, allegedly, Mexico’s principal link to Interpol and its former senior drug czar. Mexico, once again, is battling the ever powerful gangs. “It has been a fierce bloodbath,” says Felipe González González, president of the Senate public security commission and former governor of the central state of Aguascalientes. “We have more dead than you have in Iraq.”
But there is urgent concern north of the border about a potential strategic threat. “We’re fixated on Iraq and Afghanistan, but from a homeland security perspective, right here on our border, isn’t this more important?” asks Fred Burton, a former State Department counterterrorism official, now a vice president at Stratfor in Austin, Tex.
Washington, D.C. is fretting, too. “The consequences for both our countries in the near future and the not-so-near future could not be greater,” says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the drug czar. “The consequences if President Calderón fails and the institutions of government, at least in the northern part of his country, become controlled by terrorist mafias–well, we worry about ungoverned spaces far away from the U.S., and this is right next door.”
The explosion of narco terror comes alongside a precipitous drop in oil prices and the crushing effects of a deep U.S. recession. The climate of fear is kicking the life out of the economy. The second wave of the global financial crisis is playing out in the developing world–and right on our doorstep. After expanding by 3.2% in 2007 to $900 billion, Mexico’s GDP growth will slow to 1.5% this year and tumble to somewhere between zero and 0.7% in 2009, predicts Raúl Feliz, an economist at CIDE, a Mexico City think tank that specializes in economics and politics. While some of that meager expansion will come from government stimulus spending, its hands are tightly tied because state-owned oil monopoly Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) contributes 37%–$80 billion in 2008–of federal revenue. Next year analysts expect a plunge in petrodollars. Unemployment will jump from its current 4.1%. Throw in part-time workers, who account for roughly one-third of GDP, and the jobless figure soars to 10%. Feliz expects that number to reach 12% next year.
The cartels are also taking a big toll on business. “U.S. companies are worried about the safety of their workers,” says Maria Luisa O’Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance in Phoenix, Ariz. “Drugs have become such a big problem.” As they have for the business community throughout Mexico. As a result of many high-profile kidnappings and murders, one of the most vibrant businesses in the nation is security–bodyguards and armored vehicles. An executive can shell out as much as $500,000 a year to protect himself and his family, reports Stratfor.
Chronic fear of kidnapping, or worse, is driving more and more Mexicans north to the U.S. Alejandro Junco, proprietor of one of Mexico’s largest dailies, El Norte, recently moved his entire family to live in Texas. Pablo Jacobo (Jack) Suneson Bautista, owner of Marti’s, a high-end arts and crafts gallery on Guerrero Avenue in Nuevo Laredo, refuses to let his kids come home to work in the business. “No way,” he says. “I am just afraid they might be singled out or there might be some kind of kidnapping attempt.” No one knows how many Mexicans are fleeing. But Arturo Rolland, a broker at Latin Credit Mortgage & Realty in San Diego, guesses that maybe 100 families a month are moving from Tijuana to the Chula Vista/San Diego area to seek safety. Some because gangsters “are using Facebook and MySpace to track people and their relatives,” says a source at the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos, an entrepreneurs group in San Antonio.
The Gulf cartel has dug its claws into the Atlanta area, as shown by a federal indictment in September of 34 of its members who authorities say were organized into distribution and transportation cells. The feds say the leader, 20-year-old Edgar Rodríguez-Alejandro, was taking orders from the highest levels of the Gulf cartel in Mexico until he was arrested in May with 12 kilos of cocaine and $7.7 million, a slim fraction of the 16,000 kilos of cocaine and 116 weapons recently seized in the U.S. Two cells of Shorty Guzmán’s cartel in Atlanta were tracked and 20 indicted in December 2007.
What about help from the Mérida plan? “The money is going to the wrong side of the border,” contends Congressman Ted Poe (R–Tex.). “With the infiltration of law enforcement and so many corrupt officials in Mexico, we don’t want that equipment used against us.”
Too much money involved. I wrote about my tax money going south of the border to help with their law enforcement and equipment…..Smart huh,,Even me, who know very little of the working in Government of Mexico, know corruption is rampant there. Payoffs to everyone for everything….and we give them money, I believe with no strings attached, is my understanding….Well, we are one big happy, North American Union,,,aren’t we?????stay well…..
I certainly don’t believe anyone is an idiot for wanting to protect our borders, BZ. I couldn’t agree with you more. Congressman Ted Poe is exactly right. I wish we had kept Mexico back when we took Mexico City. But that’s hindsight and useless… just like our government has proven to be where this is concerned.
Mexico is what America will become if the left has it’s way. Coddling criminals is just for starters.
Just think of how many jobs would have been created on just the border issue. Building that wall would have employed tens of thousands, protecting that wall and the border would have employed another few thousand.
Another missed opportunity to help build a better, safer America.
Mexico is what America will become if the left has it’s way. Coddling criminals is just for starters.
I didn’t realize the left have been in charge over the past eight years, you learn something new everyday.
OK, let me pis off all the *shit in their necks* fake conservatives, I haven’t said this on any blog in hell, at least 2 or 3 days, KILL the goddamned invaders, at the border…
That numbnutz son of a bitch Bush wouldn’t do it, and the weak-assed FAKE fucking Conservatives loved him, right?? Look at the archives of all the FAKE Conservatives blogs… ’nuff said about the most useless POS to inhabit the White House to date…
Obama?? The border?? No fucking way… If the American people, and I am speaking to more than just a few that are regular posters here, if ya don’t get your heads out of your asses and stop the FAKE bullshit, you’re going to be over run and you will die… It’s THAT goddamned simple..
And yeah, I know, I’m that mean old fuck of a fake Vet and a Pro writer and I have NO idea what I am talking about…
Think again Bush Bots…
I fucking told you so, months ago, I fucking told ALL of you…
And very few of you listened, to those that did, it’s not too late, we can STILL take this nation back but it WILL take a WHITE revolution to make it happen…
Who has the BALLS for that??
Yeah, that’s what I thought…
It’s the very thing that brought the western part of the Roman Empire to its knees, that and some bad luck.
I firmly believe that you make your luck or whatever you want to call it and for far too long America has let illegals in, pushing your luck more and more. There is always a price to pay, whatever choice you make, some more than others, but pay you must, sooner or later, you must pay.
You desperately need more people like Texas Fred.
Tapline: thanks for visiting, and thanks for taking the time to comment, please return. The NAU? Mexico will do its best to ensure that is kicked to the curb.
Shop: my point precisely. Because Mexicans are already doing so well with their own country, are they not?
MKS: Rome imported mercs to fight their wars and others to do their work. Precisely correct. That was the beginning of the end of the idea of Rome.
Without a series of unifying links whether by a homogenous people, shared language, shared mindset, shared religion and culture, individual societies and countries are doomed.
“Diversity” and its embrace does nothing but ensure fragmentation and then eventual dissolution of a union.
For many of those entering our country, that’s the exact point. And we enable this under the banner of diversity, understanding, tolerance and, in truth: ignorance and naivete. We tend to believe that EVERYONE thinks just like us, with love for all.
That thinking will get you killed.
BZ
I still stand by my original proposal: which doesn’t cost much compared to the lives we are about to lose.
Thick wall, military control, automated sensor net and a close-in weapon’s system… keeps pesky low flying planes from getting in, too.
I still stand by my placement of the next US Counter-Insurgency will be in the Southwest US and Mexico… sad that it will have to start *here* to get things safe, but then the current President, and past four Presidents haven’t wanted to do their jobs in this area. Now with hit squads run by Mexican Mafia and drug gangs in places like AZ, CA, NM, TX… well… I did warn folks.
You sure as hell DID, AJ.
BZ
Several of us TRIED to warn folks, but they were too busy giving Bush a virtual blow-job…
Anyone that thinks Conservatives were in charge the last 8 years has a real problem with reality. We have not had a conservative MAJORITY EVER, that’s why we are in the shape we are in. We have REPUBLICAN’S and that’s as close as we can get to Conservatives.
Oh and anyone that thinks White folks are NOT the minority in Border states MUST be living in Texas or Arizona. HERE in Cali WE are the minority, but we are the MAJORITY of LEGAL Citizens.
You know how you can tell this country is going to hell? Look at the damn inner cities, THAT is how Obama got elected. Conservatism is a BAD word there because it means “RESPONSIBILITY, and Accountability.”
The Mexican Invasion is causing more than ANYONE realized, Prisons,schools,welfare, graffiti removal, state services, child care, health care, and police resources as well as many
more costs that are unseen. Now in California we are facing budget “Armageddon”and our IDIOTS in Government are cutting jobs, funding for education and other things… NOT ANYWHERE in their “Plans” is ELIMINATING or REDUCING FUNDING FOR ANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. We are cutting MORE from those of us here the right way and giving to the criminal.
I am so sick for our nation, we are going to be a third world nation by 2012, that’s what the Obamanation will bring. Sorry Ranando your hero Obama is already setting the stage.
None of our politicians want to do anything about the illegal aliens. The dems hope to make them legal so they can vote for them. The republicans want cheap labor for their corporate buddies. The average American gets screwed with no vaseline as usual. Some things never change. Texas Fred, I like your style! I agree with you about Bush, but unfortunately, NObama will be even worse.