The View from the North: Ill Tidings South of the Border
OPINION
Members of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Photo: Google
By SILVIO CANTO, JR.
Down Mexico way, a recent Reforma newspaper story is causing a lot of commotion and major concern. The original story was published in Spanish, but Pulse News Mexico published an analysis in English. It’s bad news, to say the least.
As Pulse News Mexico’s Mark Lorenzana wrote:
“The U.S. government has evidence that allegedly links members of the drug-running criminal group Guerreros Unidos to the Mexican Army, Navy and municipal police of Iguala and Cocula, in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. In a report by Mexican daily newspaper Reforma on Tuesday, Sept. 27, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (FGR) presented to a judge transcripts of instant-messaging conversations via BlackBerry smartphones intercepted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The conversations allegedly prove that members of Guerreros Unidos held meetings with elements of the Mexican military and municipal police, half a year before the forced disappearance of 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Iguala eight years ago.”
The scandal in question is the disappearance of 43 students eight years ago under President Pena-Nieto. I don’t know how much Pena-Nieto knew about the incident but he looked awfully weak in handling the whole thing.
To be honest, this is not the first time that we’ve had reports of criminal elements working with military groups. My biggest concern is that the Mexican government seems incapable of dealing with it.
It’s a bit like our big-city Democrats who look the other way when confronted with the crime statistics tearing down their cities. In other words, Mexico seems incapable of fighting them despite years of having the armed forces chasing the cartels.
Is it time for the United States to start looking at Mexico as being in the early stages of a failed state? I understand that Mexicans get angry when their country is referred to as a “failed state,” but something is definitely failing big time south of the border. Sorry amigos!A few days ago, John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist wrote an amazing analysis of how things could get even worse in Mexico:
“Since taking office (in December 2018), (Mexican President Andrés Manuel)López Obrador has pursued a posture of passivity toward the cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, the country’s most powerful. In so doing, Mexico’s president has transformed his naïve campaign slogan, “abrazos no balazos” (“hugs not bullets”), into a policy framework that can only be understood as a rebuke of the United States in favor of the cartels.”
Davidson went on to note that “what is also different now than in the past,” according to a report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) independent research institute, is that the cartels “increasingly supplant the legitimate sovereignty of the Mexican state with their own — often in cooperation with major elements of that state.”
“The qualitative difference since 2018 has been the near-open role of the current Mexican president in allowing, and perhaps even participating in, that cooperation,” Davidson said.
“Indeed, by some estimates, cartels now control up to 40 percent of Mexican territory.”
I agree with Davidson that the perfect storm of U.S. President Joe Biden’s indecisive and inconsistent border policy plus López Obrador leftist government are making the cartels stronger and in turn making law enforcement weaker.
Yes, with all due respect to the Mexicans who will get angry with me, Mexico is starting to look a lot like a failed state. And a failed state along the U.S. border is a matter of national security for both countries.