Civilians under siege by Mexican cartel fight back with AK-47s, grenades
pbs.orgSo you're forced to join a gang and fight their rival gangs, or you form your own gang equipped with rifles and grenades ready to commit violence, so that you can fight against joining that gang, or any other gang. Either way you're in a violent gang.
I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.
I agree, not all violence is the same. But perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of all just violence to the state.
I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
These gangs are states. We can tell this because they have monopolies on violence.
Reminds me of when ISIS was at its peak a few years ago and the BBC and all other news in the UK would always prefix it with “the so-called Islamic State”.
Like… no, it was a state. It had borders, it had a monopoly on violence within those borders, it collected taxes, it provided some public services.
Whether it offended the BBC’s sensibilities or not, it was a state
The entire reason there is any conflict there is a lack of a monopoly on violence… The monopoly part is significant. It’s not just “doing a lot of”.
I don't think you need total control, just enough so that you're the go-to party for diplomatic and military negotiations in the geopolitical region.
Personally I would prefer no violence from either side…
The state monopoly on violence (+ a judicial system) tends to result in a low amount of violence... at least intra-state. Wars are another matter. Notably, there is no monopoly on violence between states. States are allowed and somewhat expected to be violent psychopaths externally.
Personally, I would prefer 10B USD liquid and tax-free
In this case it's like cable TV. Only not a monopoly if you look at the whole country...
The conflict isn't because of the lack of monopoly. The conflict and lack of monopoly are because whoever as the closest thing to a monopoly is doing such a bad job.
So Russia isn't a state?
You are completely correct. As much as many people don´t want to hear it, Mexico is a failing state. It´s extremely obvious when you are there that the United Mexican States lost most of the reins some time ago.
It started with the debt crisis, and its causes, but was definitively realized by 1994 when the Zapatistas took much of Chiapas.
Too much emphasis is put on the drug cartels alone, when the problem is much larger. I suspect by the end of the century maps will no longer show Mexico in its current form.
I'd put it the other way - the state turned into gangs.
Most of the core leadership of major cartels who haven't been arrested were mid-level officers in the DFS (Mexico's version of Italy's SID and Turkey's MIT from Operation Gladio days).
What is interesting isn't the narcos who are arrested and indicted by the DoJ, but those who are arrested and then let go.
The story of Salvador Cienfuegos is a good example of that - arrested on drug charges while being Defense Minister in the 2010s, but charges were dropped for diplomatic reasons [0]. Meanwhile, giants like El Chapo or El Viceroy were successfully extradited or in the case of El Mencho killed.
To me, it feels like "untouchables" like Cienfuegos, Adán Augusto López, and Marcelo Ebrard are likely running the show.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/magazine/mexico-general-c...
Not sure its fair to equate a gang fueled by drug smuggling to a self-defense militia.
Without oversight, a self-defense militia may expand beyond its original scope in unfortunate ways. The history of the Italian Mafia can be instructive here.
Apparently, words can just mean whatever people want, so long as it aligns with one's feelings or helps them feel superior to others.
Yeah, I guess "self-defense militia" aligns more closely with some people's feelings than "violent gang" does. To each his own.
In case you need one, you have made a friend. Excellent comment, which fits the scene as might a custom tailored glove.
The reminded me of Johnnie Cochran "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit" slogan he used during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
The only equating I did was to point out that either way you're stuck having to align with a group of people willing and ready to commit lethal violence with lethal weapons.
Use whatever words you want but I think that's clearly violent and it's clearly a gang, which by definition is "a group of persons working together" or even more specifically, "a group of persons working to unlawful or antisocial ends". In this case the newly formed gang is certainly unlawful.
I'm not sure that it's certainly unlawful to defend yourself against gang violence, but I'm not a Mexican lawyer. It's such an odd thing to say that people defending their homes are now a gang because they fight back against the cartel.
These self defense groups sound great until you think about all the problems with vigilante groups. Also they have a history of turning into cartels.
That and all things being equal I suspect most of the people in these groups would rather not be fighting.
It's not an ideal situation, but since the Mexican government refuses to do its job and protect their people and uphold the law what choice do they have?
Right now these people are just doing whatever they can to survive but it's just treating the symptom. The source of the problem is the Mexican government who is either incompetent or happy to take bribes to look the other way while their citizens are left the mercy of paramilitary gangs.
What can the government do at this point? We are talking about criminal syndicates with basically standing armies. If the Mexican government goes to all out war it will lead to a humanitarian disaster.
They should send in the army. How is what's happening there now not already a war and a humanitarian disaster? The only difference is that the civilians are the ones forced into fighting and they're having to buy their guns from rival gangs to do it. Actual soldiers with the firepower of the government should be doing the fighting instead of random farmers.
Calderón did exactly that. Fought an all-out war with the cartels. 60,000 people dead and nothing changed.
He fought a war against unsanctioned drug trafficking. Drugs are not an enemy you can defeat. He should have gone to war against the cartels, but then I guess that's hard to do when your Secretariat of Public Security is working for them. Either way, as with any war, deaths are to be expected. Freedom and sovereignty are usually considered to be worth the cost.
What choice do they have?
This is not your usual vigilante group. This is a reaction to an overwhelming force of criminal gangs killing citizens and the government being powerless to stop them.
> This is a reaction to an overwhelming force of criminal gangs killing citizens and the government being powerless to stop them.
Is the Mexican government, with their tens of billions in military spending, actually "powerless" to stop these gangs? I very much doubt it.
What other choice ? Politics are yet to give a solution after decades of problems.
Our heroic self defense group.
Their brutish narco terrorist cartel.
I'd recommend reading the history of Autodefensas and FARC/FLN in Colombia.
Anti-Drug militant groups have a habit of turning into drug lords as well.
Mexico has been like that for decades, I believe it's top 1 priority for most Mexicans yet it's still not fixed. What gives ?
At some point when your government is so corrupt, you got to take weapon and organize yourself. It's sad.
Many countries are effectively ruled by gangs and cartels. That’s why kings became kind of a big deal in Europe. The states monopoly on violence was solidified back the
> At some point when your government is so corrupt, you got to take weapon and organize yourself. It's sad.
At that point you might as well point those weapons at the failed government that forced you to have to play soldier instead of protecting you. Not allowing your own citizens to be enslaved by roving bands of criminals is like the single most basic thing a country's government is for. Since the Mexican government has abandoned them and ceded control of that land to hostile armies I hope those poor farmers aren't still paying them taxes.
A characteristic of most of Latin America is that the Police and the Army were created to protect power, not the people, and there hasn't really been an effort to change the mentality.
Meanwhile in the US the laws are being changed to protect the wealthy, while the current administration is siphoning value of national assets into their own pockets. The poorer the country, the more likely this is to happen. I wonder how long it will take for warlords to set up shop in Kansas...
That's a characteristic of police everywhere.
About 30% of Mexico is gang-controlled
Highly recommend the 2015 documentary 'Cartel Land'
the real war the US should be fighting
Maybe after the US annexes Greenland, for some reason.
Why should the US be fighting Mexican gangs? Mexico should send their own army to fight the criminal gangs. If we want to send our army after gangs we have plenty of them right here in the US. We could start with the ones in our Sheriff's Departments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
And then we would get to hear about American imperialism forever....
Why should the US fight Mexican cartels? They have their own armies and plenty of ammo.
If you think the outputs of Mexican cartels stay in Mexico, you're severely underinformed. Do you know how many civilian deaths (to say nothing of human trafficking and more) are directly due to Mexican cartels?
The US absolutely has an interest in the destruction of Mexican cartels.
I'm not uninformed about cartel drug manufacturing and resulting American deaths. That's why we had to seal the border, and we need to keep enforcing it. But to send troops into a country that denies their entry is another thing.
I don't mind bombing the cartels from a distance. I'd rather the U.S. continues to pursue diplomatic options vs. war.
What's the difference between an American drone operator dropping a bomb on cartels in Mexico, and an American infantryman shooting at cartels in Mexico?
Safety, law, and politics.
Also the cartels are funded and propped up by the CIA. We need them to destabilize the Mexican government, launder blood money, traffic children for our rich pedophiles and push drugs into our poor neighborhoods.
I'm not going down those rabbit holes. If a previous CIA was or was not responsible for that, that's that. Now, we're here.
Those responsible for all those deaths are those doing drugs. A debate could be had as to drugs should be legal or not but if you're doing coke, meth, fentanyl, etc. you simply are part of the problem because those drugs are illegal and represent a big part of the 3 to 5% of the worldwide GDP that's linked to crime (official World CIA factbook numbers).
You are funding these cartels. You are both complicit and responsible for the countless deaths and power these cartels and drug dealers have.
I don't think the US should be fighting drug cartels: I think the US should be punishing consumers much, much, much more.
Have fun thinking about those killed by drug cartels next time you sniff.
I was under the impression ferrying migrants over the border and avocados were almost as big revenue streams as the drugs. Et tu, avocado toast and gardener?
This is true, though.
But please do not say this out loud, you might hurt the feelings of a passing junkie.
those that sniff aren't thinking about anybody except themselves, not one little bit
Just remember, American caused this