Mexico

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
not only do the standard gods not get the job done, neither do the authorities

it explains why people don't just suffer the rule, but actually romanticize and in some cases worship narcos

i.e. there is in a cartel named after the Knights Templar (really), who's dead founder Nazario is worshipped as a saint in Michoacan where he was from
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Reminds me of that scene in City of God (weirdly unconnected with the rest of the film) where Lil Ze goes to a candomble guy and is given a protective necklace.
 

muser

Well-known member

Not like we haven't got a pretty grim fairly recent history, heads on spikes, people being drawn and quartered etc..

I have a Mexican housemate in my new place on our first conversation didn't take long for her to end up on the cartels. She said she grew up in a pretty quiet port town that over the course of her childhood got taken over by cartels resulting in her seeing heads left in shopping malls, body parts left around on the street for people to see etc. And described how people got completely numbed to it eventually. I get the feeling most of it is purely fear and intimidation especially considering how much money is made from extortion.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Not like we haven't got a pretty grim fairly recent history, heads on spikes, people being drawn and quartered etc..

Oh of course, that goes without saying. And yes we've got kids stabbing each other over drug deals but nothing that's within a million miles of what goes on in Mexico (not that you were saying that).
 

luka

Well-known member
A world in which America grants itself the right to kill anyone in the world anywhere at any time and not just muslims in muslim countries.

Might other states unilaterally grant themselves the same leeway?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I thought terrorism was politically or ideologically motivated, by definition?

I get that the Mexican cartels are unbelievably rich and well organised, to the point of effectively forming armies in their own right, but they're still 'just' crime gangs, which have existed since forever. I bet there were cartels and Mafia-type gangs in Republican Rome.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I guess narco-terrorism is a thing, but that's still the use of money derived from the drug trade to further political aims. So the gangsterism is, at least in theory, a means and not an end.

AFAIK the term is applied mainly in South America, too - dunno if Mexico has 'narco-terrorism' as such.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I listened to the latest episode of Popular Front this morning which is all about the cartels: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/63-mexicos-new-narco-militias/id1364539980?i=1000460346636

It's an interview with a counter-cartel expert, Ed Calderon. There's some commentary on the narco-terrorism aspect. Seriously fascinating show. I would of course be lying if I said there wasn't some kind of vicarious thrill from listening to this stuff which must be fucking terrifying to live with.
 

version

Well-known member
This is an interesting theory, although it feels more like a creative provocation along the lines of Baudrillard than a concrete thesis, what with the title and the author being a literature professor.

 
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