STN
sou'wester
this is a weird and creepy tale:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/mayor-mauricio-fernandez-saldana-mexico
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/mayor-mauricio-fernandez-saldana-mexico
Mexico
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
actually, it's kind of surprising that it took this long for rich Mexicans to set up their own death squads, given Mexico's long history of vigilantism and death squads. or maybe that should be, that it took this long for the fact that the rich have their own private death squads to come to light. I especially like the bit at the end where they suggest that perhaps he setup a deal with the Beltran-Levyas. friendly neighborhood narcos & all that; I wonder if their kids play footie together.
sufi
lala
"mexico is the road of death, but the states is death itself"
true stories - which way home
child migrants from honduras cross mexico to the states
true stories - which way home
child migrants from honduras cross mexico to the states
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Mexican Drugs War
Couldn't see a thread on this - total madness. That atrocity with 15 headless corpses dumped on the sidewalk in Acapulco last weekend (?) was craziness, but par for the course these days. And reports of Guatemala declaring a state of emergency because of incursions southwards by the drugs gangs have been mental.
What I find mad and intriguing is that this has happened in a country as populous and close to the US as Mexico.
Couldn't see a thread on this - total madness. That atrocity with 15 headless corpses dumped on the sidewalk in Acapulco last weekend (?) was craziness, but par for the course these days. And reports of Guatemala declaring a state of emergency because of incursions southwards by the drugs gangs have been mental.
What I find mad and intriguing is that this has happened in a country as populous and close to the US as Mexico.
crackerjack
Well-known member
there was one a year or so back, called something like Mexico: failed state?
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
ah, it's just called 'Mexico'! I'm overtired and listening to Elephant Man's Badman Holiday, both of which I hold responsible for my disorientedness.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Worth reading iirc. Lot of stuff from Padraig. The good one, not the, er, 'odd' one.
Dr Awesome
Techsteppin'
The US has a multi billion dollar training/aid program going on down there... b2b sealing up the border bit by bit. The violence has begun spilling over into the border towns of the states for a while though.
Leo
Well-known member
just this week, the ny times had an article about a small mexican town near the border where half the population has fled town and the police department was down to one officer...who has just been kidnapped and been missing for the past week. parts of mexico is pretty close to being a narco-state. unbelievable.
sufi
lala
merged those threads for you sir, not much i can do about elephant man i'm afraid...
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
we've been "sealing up" the border for decades with little success. it doesn't matter how many walls are put up, there simply isn't the manpower available. well, actually the funding to provide the necessary manpower, which would enormous, but same difference. what it does do is channel sin documentos into the most inhospitable, deadly areas of the border for crossing, with predictably lethal results. oh and it also further enriches coyotes - who unlike the people they guide, are the scum of the earth - and other unsavory types. anyway, it's an impossible task. also, unfortunately immigration, drugs & violence are tied up into a single unwieldy mass not only in the public eye, helped along by sensationalist media coverage & lou dobbs et al, but also in our hopelessly muddled collection of border & immigration policies. I reckon that more recent cross-border violence & coverage thereof is greatly amplified by white fears over immigration. which may be an obvious point but needs to be said. to put it in context violence has been spilling over the border, in various incarnations, for a hundred and eighty odd years; endless border raiding (no different from many borders of antiquity, i.e. England-Scotland), the War of Independence & the Mexican-American War, Pancho Villa's famous cross-border attacks during the revolution and the resulting American punitive expedition, and so on. drug shootouts spilling across isn't exactly a new phenomenon, either. the demographic reconquista is a reality both undeniable and, simply given geography, unsurprising, but instead of attempting to deal with it constructively we have last gasp measures like SB 1070. which isn't to say that there isn't cross-border drug violence, just that you have to think about larger picture in how it's reported & received.
in re: Mexico itself I maintain my prior view that there's a there real chicken & egg scenario with the upswing in violence & the crackdown by the calderon administration. sure, parts of Mexico were lawless and/or under the rule of non-state entities, but that's always been the case. norteños have been writing narcocorridos about gangsters for the better part of a century. which isn't optimal, ok, but somehow the state still functioned & Mexicans still lived their lives. calderon went out and picked a fight and, surprise, he got one. it seems to me trying to separate economic immigrants (the great majority) from the legitimately criminal elements with whom they're currently forced to deal so as to isolate the latter would be a much more useful approach to both immigration & drugs, than yet more fruitless militarization, but what the hell do I know, right? narcos use the ocean of regular immigrants like maoist guerrillas used the chinese peasants. that and decriminalization of drugs, long since suggested by a plethora of Mexican politicians, among others.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
the main issue, really, is that treating drugs and their use as a military/security rather than a social problem has been a failure on pretty much every level.
see also: the pretty much complete failure of the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia.
see also: the pretty much complete failure of the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Just read Micha Glenny's McMafia which is great about this* if you haven't checked it already, well recommended
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/06/society
*drugs and crime worldwide not just in Mexico
crackerjack
Well-known member
Love that book.
More specifically on Mexico, has anyone read the new Ed Vuillamy?
And, as I think I said upthread, if you want a fictional take, you have to read Power of the Dog.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Much obliged. Could you petition him to make a song about Hogmanay? That would be great.
Micha Glenny - that's the same guy who wrote a great book about the break-up of Yugoslavia, right? If so, will def get my hands on a copy of his one about Mexico (and the rest of the wrold).
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crackerjack
Well-known member
It's not about Mexico (I dont think he even goes there), but there's a lot about Colombia and the War on Drugs inside the US (incl a real-life Bunny Colvin). Essentially it's a book about crime without frontiers.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Who's hoping the Zetas dispatch an elite task force to the UK to behead Clarkson?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That would be amazing. I can imagine his last words as the machete falls: "Hey, come on Pedro, it was only a jo-" THUNK.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Routes' idea rocks.
Do they have some kind of email address? I want to let them know about this, in case they're not glued to iplayer all the time.
Do they have some kind of email address? I want to let them know about this, in case they're not glued to iplayer all the time.