The country’s drug cartels internationalize their business relationships and increasingly expand their activities on the territory of the United States
At the end of February, employees of the US Federal Criminal Office (FBI) and the US anti-drug federation (DEA) arrested in the States of Maryland, Minnesota and California, which are suspected of working for the Mexican Sinaloa cartel in the federal states of Maryland, Minnesota and California. The action was the highlight of an almost two-year-continuous determination against Mexico’s oldest drug cartel, which has previously arrested 755 people in various places in the US and, in addition to $ 59.1 million, cash, 149 motor vehicles and three aircraft also 13.000 kilos of cocaine, 8000 kilos marijuana and 1.3 million ecstasy pills were confiscated. According to the US Foreign Office, Mexican cartels now control the trade in illegal drugs and the Attorney General of the United States, Eric H in 230 American Cities. Holder Jr., Recently explained at a press conference in Washington: "These cartels will be destroyed. They are a threat for national security."
After estimates from Edgardo Buscaglia, Legal Professor at the Private University ITAM in Mexico City, the Mexican drug bands now operate in 41 countries and already have a considerable criminal infrastructure in Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolovia and the States of Central America.
In view of this questioning development, Dante Caputo explained a high-ranking representative of the organization of American states (OAS), at the end of November last year, an anti-drug forum in Santiago de Chile: "The drug trafficking bakes, damaged and endangers democracy in our countries." And he stressed that the Narcos "Not only do their criminal farms want to taste, but also strive for the power."
In her home country Mexico, the cartels is already largely successful. According to estimates of the UN, up to 60 percent of Mexican burgermeas are committed to communal level or on the Friendship and Family Engineering with the organized drug trafficking and in the focal points of the drug criminalitat, such as the northern border town of Ciudad Juarez, presumably up to 80 percent of the police officers the salary lists of "Narcos". How closely the Mexican resisted with the organized crimetat were impacted significantly at the end of last year, when Victor Gerardo Garay, head of the Mexican Federal Police (PFP), had to influence corruption ruled out and little later also the boss of Interpol-Mexico, Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas , was arrested, the monthly 450.000 US dollar for passing on secret information to the Sinaloa cartel should have been received. Similar accusations resulted in the same period also to the arrest of Mexico former anti-drug-Zar Noe Ramirez Mandujano and the high-ranking employees of the Federal Police Unit against Organized Crimetat (Siedo), Miguel Colorado Gonzalez and Fernando Rivera Hernandez.
The US government then praised Mexico’s Legal Conservative President Felipe Calderon for its "Achievements in the fight against the cartels", However, warned in a recently ied by the US Department of Foreign Affairs, that "The progress made against the background of the continued high corruption level in Mexico’s judicial and police apparatus" and underlined that the "Corruption in the Mexican public institutions the main obstacle is to successfully crop the power of drug cartels."
This association also explains why it has been Felipe Calderon in the 27 months since its office despite the nationwide acquisition of 45.000 Army and 5,000 additional federal police officers has failed to decisively weak the structures of organized drug trade. Critics are pregnant to have established itself on one-sided of a military solution of the conflict to ignore the social causes of the drug criminalitat and to make important tasks, such as the interruption of the cashmonds,.
In addition, the numerous and little coordinated arrests of high and medium "Narco"-Cadders A vacuum creates that ambitious and extremely violent young criminals can easily rise in the organizations. As a result, brutalatat has achieved a previously unknown exhibition between safety faith and members of the drug bands and the fighting within the rival cartels, which cost alone last year over 6,000 people life. A turnaround is not in sight, because in the first two months of this year, according to information (9) of Mexico’s Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora is already over 1000 fatalities in Calderons "Drug war" record.
However, the prasident is unauthorized in its repressive anti-drug policy and has just sent another 4,000 soldiers and federal policemen into the violent border town of Ciudad Juarez. For months, members of the Juarez, Sinaloa and Michoacan cartels have been providing a bloody fight for the control of the 1.8-million metropolis, which acts as a turntable for 40 percent of all drugs smuggled into the USA.
Pseudoephedrine from Africa
A briefly published study by the International Restrolling Council (INCB) demonstrates that the Mexican drug cartels increasingly ground illuminants in developing policies and are particularly active on the African continent. After the Mexican Government 2007 pseudoephedrine and ephedrine – the raw materials for the production of the chemical drug methamphetamine – with an import ban, the cartels initially turned out to Asian ephedrine, which they imported them on Argentina and Central America illegally to Mexico and began in parallel with the construction of their own Production states in several West African states.
The reason for this step was mainly due to the consolidated cooperation of the Argentine and Mexican law enforcement behavior, which led at the end of November last year to the arrest of Mario Roberto Segovia, which supplied from Argentina from the Mexican cartels for two years with Uber 8000 kilograms of Ephedrin. Only a few days later, on 1. December, the Spanish news agency EFE reported the arrest of three Mexican state castles in the Australian city of Sydney and thus supplied another reference to the worldwide networking of the Mexican drug bands. The three men were part of a transnational drug ring, the Latin American cocaine on Mexico and the United States to Australia smuggled, where the high black market prices for charging agents promise extracted profits.
The business relationships of the Mexican drug handlers now also cover the European continent. According to Nicola Gratteri, judiciary of the city of Reggio and author of a book on the organized crime in his homeland Italy, members of the Golf cartels regularly communicate on their Blackberries with the Italian ‘Ndrangheta, the union of the Calabrian Mafia and already have a strategic alliance Closed to supply together the European market with cocaine from Sud America. The golf cartel wants to testify to Gratteri "Europe conquer, because there is a rough market here and understood that the cocainer is decreasing in the US and rising in Europe". He estimates the potential volume of this cooperation at 34 million euros.
In Latin America, Colombian drug mafia has been the most important trading partner of Mexican cartels for several decades for several decades. For a long time, Mexican drug Capos were only the hand lane of the once-powered cartels of Medellin and Cali, this situation changed fundamentally in the course of the 80s and at the beginning of the 90s. At that time, the US anti-drug authority became increasingly succeeded in blocking the transport routes of the mainly about the Caribbean to Florida Colombian cocongue. As a result, the Mexican "Narcos" the transport of the drug over the land path to the USA.
Meanwhile, almost 90 percent of Colombia mainly passed and consumed in the United States, Cocains consumed the 3200-kilometer border of Mexico with the United States and serves estimated 7 million consumers there. This development has contributed to a significant shift in the power differences in favor of the Mexican cartels, which according to the words of the Colombian Politologist Juan Carlos Garzon "Now want to impose the Colombian cartels your conditions" and in contrast to earlier "Do not want to wait. until the drugs get into their country, but they want to make contacts in the route of origin."
This new strategy does not remain without consequences in the region. On the 17th. February of this year, the Peruvian daily La República reported a sliding between members of Mexican Sinaloa cartel and Colombian drugstanders near the Peruvian capital Lima, after both groups "the war for the control of the drug market in the city" had explained.
Similar incidents have been reported for months mainly from Central America. In view of the escalating violence associated with organized drug trafficking in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Carlos Castresana, head of the UN Commission, explained against impunity in Guatemala (CICIG):
The nations of Latin America urgently need international help to resort to the increasingly dangerous prasence of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Latin America has no time anymore, we are in an emergency situation.
Troops to the border
The Republican Governor of the State of Texas, Rick Perry, asked the US home protection minister Janet Napolitano at the end of February to the deployment of at least 1,000 US soldiers to the Texan-Mexican border. Perry charged his demand with the increasing violence in the northern border regions Mexico and explained a press conference on 26. February in El Paso: "We are very troubled that the US Federal Government does not provide the necessary funds for border security. We have to be prepared for all contingentities."
Also the head of the Texan Homemeral Property Ministry, Steve McCraw, exerts himself worried about the security situation of the Rio Grande and ames that "The violence in Mexico becomes worse before the situation improves." In his edition of 8. Marz of this year reports the Star Telegram that the Texan and US Federal Government has already developed an emergency plan to "overshoot" to prevent the violence of Mexico to the United States. According to MCCRAW, this is one "very aggressive plan to react very quickly to potential threats". Napolitano said last week, that for the Mexican drug war, so typical brutal murders and deployment had not yet made their way north, but stressed: "This is a very serious fight. He could watch the United States. If that happens, we have crisis tarpaulins to handle it."
Already now the Mexican drug cartels are responsible for an increase in the criminal entity in different regions of the USA. In Phoenix, the capital of the state of Arizona, the number of Losegeld-Erprangen has increased by 325 percent since 2005. After the local police keeps the fans – and a coarse part of the victims – Most of Members of Mexican drug bands. In the US media, Phoenix already carries the little flattering title of "Kidnapping capital of the United States". Also in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, a similar development is to be identified. According to the DEA employee Rodney G. Benson, however, be difficult to call exact numbers, as many remuneration victims with the drug cartels in direct relationship hours and therefore did not cooperate with the investigative authorities.
In addition to Phoenix and Atlanta, which are important drug envelopes for the Mexican cartels because of their numerous interstate highways, the US resists report violent interim cases with the participation of "Narcos" Off so different bads like Boston, Massachusetts; Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Birmingham, Alaska. There, the police already found in August last year in an apartment Funf Manner with cut-out throat, which were obviously tortured with electric shocks before they were dead. The murders are to be the work of a job killer who worked for a Mexican drug cartell and the victims for a non-settled blame of 400.000 US dollars should eliminate.
In its current international noise control and strategy port (INCSR), the US Foreign Office not only confirmed the growing prasence of Mexican cartels in the United States, but also states the increase in marijuana production on US territory by members of these organizations. US drugfahners in California alone in December last year 2.9 million cannabis plants destroyed, of which a coarse part by members of Mexican cartels should have been planted. It is also warned against the ocological consequences of this development:
In the US, Marijuana is grown mainly in national parks, especially in California and Texas near the border with Mexico. This marijuana production leaves tons of mull, biological risk substances and poisonous waste.
Despite the increased outdoor construction and an increase of difficult, artificially illuminated hydrocultures, however, the Mexican cartels continued to focus on the smuggling larger quantities of Marihuanas, which is produced in Mexico for the US market. To do this, use u.a. Mobile ramps with which the border tunes can be overcome or transported the marijuana pressed to bale by sewage pipes or "Narco"-Tunnel on US field. A total of 16.000 tonnes are to have found their way to American consumers alone last year.
Together with the elegant from the sale of 18 tons of Heroin and 270 tons of cocaine, the Mexican cartels generated according to David T. Johnson, head of the International Narcotics and Legal Affairs Office (INL). In this way a net profit of 25 billion US dollars. In Mexico, Johnson should be 150.000 people directly involved in drug trafficking, while up to 300.000 people with the production of marijuana and opium deny their livelihood.
Legalization as a way out?
A few weeks ago, Mexico’s Ex-Prassident Ernesto Zedillo signed the explanation of a group of Latin American intellectual with the programmatic title "Drugs and democracy in Latin America: for a paradigm shift." The explanation, which was also signed by Fernando Enrique Cardoso and Cesar Gaviria, the former Prasident Brazil and Colombia, as well as the writers Mario Vargas Llosa, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Paulo Coelho and Enrique Santos, refers to the USA since the USA in Latin America victim "War against the drugs" As failed and demands a fundamental change in drug policy. For example, seeks are not more long than criminals, but as a sick and treated accordingly medically treated, the release of cannabis products for personal use should be allowed and the declaration of teenagers over drugs are simultaneously expanded.
The Mexican government was very enthusiastic about suggesting. Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova explicitly spoke against the legalization of Marihuana, because this in his opinion "Gross problems in addiction pravention and treatment of drug deposits." But he knew how to discuss this question particularly, and said: "There are no taboo topics."
Also in Washington, the ex-prasides with their initiative have no open deals. Although Barack Obama had been the US Senate during 2004 during the US Senate’s election campaign "War against the drugs" as one "Complete failure" designated. Still in November of last year, he had admitted to have consumed Marijuana during his high school time, a general release of cannabis products will not give it under Obama. Although the appointment of Gil Kerlikovske as a new anti-drug-ZAR of the US movement into the federal non-unevenly regulated question of the legalization of medical marijuana, but is currently the focus of the Obama government in the drug policy on mails, which is a surprise of Mexican "Narco"-To prevent war on the United States.
On the last Thursday explained Roger calls, operations in the US home protection ministry before a Congress Subcommittee that the US government could deploy a posting of National Guardists or Army Horives to the border with Mexico, if the security situation is dramatically deteriorating there. However, he called this possibility as "last step." The Republican deputy Jerry Lewis even characterized the conflict of the Mexican government with organized drug trafficking against the US Associated Press, even as for the US government "Very much more important" As Afghanistan and demanded him much more attention to give him.
Prasident Obama met on Thursday with a remarkably clear statement to the "Narco" problem with the public, after the Mexican head of Haupt Felipe Calderon had repeatedly accused of the United States in recent months to carry a complicity of escalating violence in Mexico. In an interview Obama said:
The drugs come north, we send money and weapons towards the Suden – and as a consequence, these cartels have gained an extra-habitable power.
