Posts Tagged ‘drug war’
Just what we need.
So it appears that the US is sending “C.I.A. operatives and retired military personnel” to Mexico to help fight the drug cartels. From a recent NYTimes article:
“The pressure is going to be especially strong in Mexico, where I expect there will be a lot more raids, a lot more arrests and a lot more parading drug traffickers in front of cameras.”
Speaking as a gringo who lives here, thanks, but no thanks. How much evidence do we need to conclude that the “war on drugs” is a misguided notion? Also from the article:
“the number of deaths in Mexico is proof positive that the strategy is working and that the cartels are being weakened,”
How’s that? More violence is a good thing? If this is progress, I can do without it. Since Mexico began “cracking down” on the cartels, drug sales have gone through the roof. And now we’re adding drones, Blackhawk helicopters, and private contractors to the mix? If memory serves, that didn’t work so well in Iraq or Afganistan. I have a better idea: if the US wants mexico to stop selling it drugs, perhaps the US should stop buying them.
Mexican Nearsourcing a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year.
Posted by: andy in Agave Lab, Nearsourcing on December 11th, 2009
Check out this well-written article about Mexico’s rocky 2009. The flu, recession, drug wars, rogue neutrinos – it’s been a hell of year. Thankfully, one happy little corner of the economy happens to be where we’re camped.
Another industry that has thrived in Mexico despite the recession is software development. Anchored in the city of Guadalajara and surrounding state of Jalisco, Mexican software engineers both develop their own software and provide “nearshoring” code writing services to software companies in California and elsewhere. Jalisco boasts over 200 information technology companies, and national IT organizations are projecting 11% growth for the sector in 2009 at a time when most other industries are facing contraction for the year.
Is It Safe?
Great Op-Ed piece in the NY Times about the US perceptions of the drug cartel violence here. I feel like I need to chip in my two cents here.
Mexico is not without its warts and the drug wars do indeed represent a huge problem but the view from the street bears little resemblance to the pornography of violence that one sees in the media (my Mom called me the other day (from the Midwest) and asked me how I was dealing with all of the beheadings!)
I’m not sure which cartel was the mastermind behind this heinous act, but we DID have some lawn chairs stolen from our porch. That’s been the extent of the crime that we’ve witnessed here. I’m sure that there is violence around us but I’ve not seen any, neither have any of my friends, nor their friends. Let’s put this into perspective:
Gun violence in the U.S. kills 14 out of every 100K people. In Mexico, it’s 12 out of every 100K. Dig a little deeper and you find that 4 out of 5 gun deaths in Mexico are narcos killing other narcos (Mexico’s “self-cleaning-oven”). Unless my math fails me, that means approximately 2.5 out of every 100K normal everyday citizens are killed by guns here. I don’t know what the narco-on-narco numbers are for the US but I suspect that they are negligible. Add it up and you are 5 times more likely to be shot and killed in the US than in Mexico.
Are my numbers accurate? Who knows. There are so many variables (crimes committed vs reported, non-gun murders, etc. etc.) but certainly Mexico doesn’t deserve the bad rap it’s been handed as of late. As mentioned in the article: “Let’s leave caricatures where they belong, in the hands of cartoonists.”