Mexico Drug War
Last weekend, the New York Times Magazine had a feature article on the ongoing drug war in Mexico. The report follows Genaro Garcia Luna, the top cop in Mexico, as he attempts to battle the drug cartels.
From the NY Times:
What was “surprising” to him, however, was not the firepower or brutality of the traffickers; the surprising thing was that in Tijuana, the government was supposed to be winning. Over the previous few years, the city’s dominant drug cartel, known as the Arellano Félix cartel, after the family that runs it, had been, as many of García Luna’s top aides told me, practically dismantled. One of the Arellano Félix brothers was shot, another arrested by Mexican special forces and a third seized by American agents as he fished in the Pacific from a boat called the Dock Holiday. U.S. and Mexican authorities shut down several “narcotunnels,” elaborately engineered smuggling passages that run as deep as 100 feet below the fence that separates Tijuana from the United States. Stash after stash of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana was seized in town or intercepted at the border.
But by the measure that matters most to the average citizen — security — the situation was as bad or worse than ever. Even as the Mexican government was sending fleets of security officers to Tijuana, there were at least 15 drug-related killings there the week of García Luna’s visit.
This pattern has become common in Mexico. Since the end of 2006, the Calderón government has sent more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police on high-powered anti-drug “operations” to combat drug cartels. It has initiated sweeping plans for judicial and police reform. It has extradited several top cartel figures to the United States, earning praise and a package of anti-drug aid from the U.S. government. Yet this year is on pace to be the bloodiest on record for Mexico’s drug war, surp
