The National Interest:Mexico Bleeds over the Border

Story by Ted Galen Carpenter, author of Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, on http://nationalinterest.org about the violence spilling over into the United States from the Drug Cartel’s in Mexico. These powerful gangs continue to use their ill gotten gains from Cannabis prohibition to fund death and destruction at every turn. Michelle Leonhart, the new Administrations appointment for DEA chief, has been quoted as saying that these acts of horrendous violence are a sign of “Success” for Mexico’s authorities. And I quote, ““Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very courageous Mexican counterparts are having,” and “The cartels are acting out like caged animals, because they are caged animals.”. She continues to ignore the recommendation from the American Medical Association that Cannabis be reclassified from a schedule 1 drug and wants to keep up this failed war on our people. The fact that she find’s these deaths a show of success is sickening. She still has not been appointed and it may be a long shot to stop it now. We can still let our government know that we do not want a woman in charge of our drug enforcement agency who has such a disregard from human life, American or no. Continue to contact your representatives and let you voice be heard. Head over to http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/ to find the government official near you here in Texas. We still live in a free country and we refuse to be silenced. Cannabis Liberum!

“Cartel hit men have not only killed victims–including Americans–in Mexico, but they have apparently struck at individuals inside the United States. During 2008 and 2009, seven individuals were killed execution style in Laredo, Texas, across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo—a major arena in the turf wars between the drug gangs. Authorities arrested and convicted two Gulf cartel enforcers for the string of executions. In October 2008, a Las Vegas child was kidnapped because a relative owed money to one of Mexican drug gangs.

In September 2009, three armed men dragged Sergio Saucedo, a resident of Horizon City, Texas, out of his home and shoved him into an SUV. Saucedo’s wife, as well as school children in a packed bus, witnessed the abduction. His body was found several days later in Ciudad Juárez, with its arms chopped off and placed on the chest. U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested four men, including two who were U.S. citizens, the following February in connection with the crime.

The drug lords are now bold enough to put Americans living in the United States, including law enforcement personnel, on target lists for execution. Police in Nogales, Arizona went on heightened alert in June 2010 after receiving a threat, relayed through an informant, that officers would be targeted if they continued to carry out off-duty drug busts. Apparently traffickers considered it within the rules of the game for police to engage in such raids as part of their job when they were on duty, but that it was a gratuitous affront to do so on other occasions. When off duty, the cartel warned, police were to look the other way and ignore any drug shipments that came across the border, if they valued their lives. The warning occurred just days after two off-duty police officers seized four hundred pounds of marijuana while horseback riding outside the city. What was especially chilling about the cartel warning is that it specifically named the officers who were off-duty in the area of the drug bust that day. The Nogales police chief instructed his officers to keep weapons with them at all times and to frequently communicate their whereabouts to the department. He also encouraged them to wear body armor even when they were off duty.

Perhaps the most jarring incident occurred in early August 2010, when reports surfaced that a Mexican cartel had put a $1 million bounty on the life of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, the chief lawman in Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix and many of its suburbs). The threat originated in Mexico and was conveyed via a disposable cell phone–standard operating procedure for all of the drug gangs. There is no doubt that the Mexican drug cartels loathe the man, since his department is one of the most active in the southwestern states in intercepting drug shipments. Consequently, state and federal law enforcement agencies took the threat against Arpaio’s life quite seriously. They did so perhaps even more than usual in the summer of 2010, because just weeks earlier, the DEA had warned that the cartels were about to take their war from Mexico north of the border and attack U.S. law enforcement personnel.

Sometimes, the spillover of Mexico’s violence is graphic and direct. Officials and residents in El Paso were badly shaken in late June when seven bullets struck the upper floors of city hall. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured, but if the incident had occurred earlier in the day when more people were in the building conducting business, the outcome might have been different. Apparently, the shots came from an altercation across the border in Juárez, and the incident was a graphic reminder that Mexico’s violence was not necessarily confined to Mexican territory.

Fear and anger is spreading well beyond the southwestern states. A scathing editorial in the influential conservative newspaper Investor’s Business Daily scorned President Obama’s assurance that our southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past twenty years. If that’s true, IBD’s editors asked, “why is El Paso’s City Hall taking fire from Mexico?” ”

Click here to read the entire story at http://nationalinterest.org. Peace and Good Buds.

Topher Belsher
Director of Online Community Outreach
Texas NORML