What’s Going On In Mexico And Why It Should Concern Us?

By Joseph J Kusnell for Boomeryearbook.com Something is dead wrong south of the border. Mexico is falling into a depression. The reasons have a lot to do with us and the consequences may be dire.

Many things are going wrong in Mexico these days, but a few stand out. First, the tourist industry has gone into reverse. They can’t give hotel rooms away. This is, in part, because of the failing world economy but it is made significantly worse by Mexico’s collapsing government. (Did you know that there are some seventy Americans missing down there and no one knows what has happened to them? The most common assumption is that they have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom. If so, kidnapping might be on the way to being a lucrative, tourist industry.)

The second calamity is the loss of revenue from the United States. Remember all those immigrants – both legal and illegal – that flooded America for jobs? Those people sent money back home each and every month to help support the families they left behind. Mexicans are big on families – and Mexican families are big – so the money amounted to billions of dollars. So much money was sent back to Mexico that immigrant money became Mexico’s second biggest source of revenue.

With the recession in America, those jobs have dried up, the influx of money has stopped, and those poor Mexicans have gone home. Back home not only have they ceased to generate money for the government, but now they need assistance from the government in order to survive. They have turned from an asset to a very big liability. So Mexico has suffered a double hit here.

Next, Mexico produces a lot of oil. They are, in fact, our second biggest supplier of oil. Well two things have happened in the oil industry that adversely affected Mexico: (1) people used less oil and (2) the price of oil went down. It was a double hit for the government. (We need to keep in mind, if the Mexican Government goes bad; whoever controls that government also controls the oil coming from Mexico and the revenue coming back. Not a pretty thought. It signifies that Mexico may be on the verge of a financial and a political disaster that could have serious implications to the United States.

In addition to the problems the recession is causing the Mexican government, it is also causing a problem for the American government. American corporations invested a lot of money in Mexico when Bill Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement so they have a huge investment down there and though the losses are in Mexico, they do affect parent corporations in the United States. Equally important, the American manufacturing capability in Mexico is a significant portion of America’s total manufacturing capability. If we lose that, the hit back home will be significant. What looked like a good idea some time ago may turn out to be a very bad idea now. If so, we have painted ourselves into a very tight corner and we are nowhere near as strong or as independent or as rich as we once were. Hence, we are a lot more vulnerable than we ever were before in our history.

Today, in what may turn out to be our biggest problem in the world, the Mexican government is losing control of the country to the drug cartels. The only consistent money coming in to the country is coming from the drug industry. Drugs seem to be a recession proof business. Cartels can still sell all the drugs they can smuggle into America. Drug sales give them more and more power. (To cut them off at the post, America may want to consider legalizing the growing and distribution of marijuana in the United States. It would cut the heart out of the drug cartels and give the legitimate Mexican Government a hand up. If we don’t want to do that, we’d better get ready for war because it won’t be long before it will be necessary for us to invade Mexico in order to restore legitimacy to its Government. They are far too close to be allowed to become an outlaw state. )

Some years ago, the US government, in its infinite wisdom, provided weapons and training for Osama bin Laden’s fighters to help them fight the Russians. The fighters were known as The Mujahadden. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. As it turned out, it was not.

Not long ago we did it again, this time it was Mexico. We trained an elite group of military men known as Los Zetas. They were trained to be the swat team for the Mexican government in the war against the drug cartels. Guess what happened on the way to the beach? The Mexican government got weaker and less well financed, and the drug cartels got stronger and much better-financed, so the cartels were able to recruit a number of the American-trained Los Zetas as mercenaries and to use them to recruit and train their own fighters. Sound familiar? Today, the cartels are almost strong enough to challenge the Mexican Government.

How’s that for a potential problem? A county which shares 2,000 miles of open border with us, run by drug cartels, with a military trained in the United States and armed with the best and most expensive equipment available. If that doesn’t send chills down your spine, you aren’t paying attention.

The result to Mexico would be catastrophic. With so much money in the hands of the Cartels and so little in the hands of the government, the government will find it can no longer pay for certain vital services – police, fire, health care – which will cost them the loyalty of those employees. Think of the police having to skip paychecks because the government is out of money. Or fireman who can’t respond because there is no money. What would happen if a drug boss came along and offered to ‘help an officer out’ in exchange for a small favor or two? Or pay the fireman as a “public service”. What about putting them all on the payroll the way Al Capon did in Chicago years ago? And what if they “helped out” a military commander or two? Money has a very loud voice.

Not many years ago during the depression, the city of Chicago fell into the hands of Al Capone and the Mafioso. Booze was king and Capone was the King of Booze. So he had pockets full of money when nobody else had much. Capone began to ‘help out’. He gave money to cops, to detectives, to reporters and to judges. After a while, he owned the cops, the detectives, the reporters and the judges. In fact, he owned the city, lock stock and judges.

I point this out because it happened here and it can happen just as easily in Mexico.
Their declining economy combined with the strength of the cartels makes it very possible. It happened before in Columbia, if you remember, but they weren’t our next door neighbor nor were they nearly so large. So we could deal with it. What eventually brought Al down, was the non-corrupt US Federal Government, not the State of Illinois. Well bad news, kids, Mexico has no such Federal Government to step in, so, we may have to do it for them.

Should we? Why not? It really is our problem. Were it not for us, the cartels would be out of business.

As the number of individual Mexican officials taking drug money increases (as it will), the drug lords will acquire more and more power and influence. In essence, they will become the real government of the country. And remember, if challenged in Mexico, the drug lord can make a fine argument to his Mexican friends: “if Americans want to buy drugs and we have those drugs to sell, why is it we should not benefit from their vice?”

It’s a strong argument and truly, I am not sure how to answer it. I can see where Mexicans who are hungry, or whose families are hungry, would find it all but impossible to deny. They are under no obligation to save Americans from their own stupidity. (Read, “Is It Time for America to Consider Legalizing Drugs?” on this blog.)

Update: January 28, 2009 – The head of a Mexican police chief was delivered to his colleagues in an ice box in the country’s latest drug-related violence.
The incident came as 16 other people were also killed in Mexico’s northern state of Chihuahua in attacks the authorities believe are linked to the country’s drug wars.

In the past, drug cartels in Central America have killed cops, reporters and high-ranking officials often with impunity. That is what is shaping up for Mexico today. We can not let that happen. We cannot sit idly by and watch it happen. Mexico is much too close, too big, and shares too many miles of common border with us to be left to its own devices.
Nor should we forget that they are our number two supplier of oil.

As for the Mexicans, don’t expect them to fight the drug lords alone. Who would there be who could stand up to them and live even if he tried? Who would be safe from their vengeance? Whose family would be safe? The answer is – no one. As long as Americans must have their drugs, the drug lords will have the cash needed to corrupt the system. So you might say we are at fault. And you would be right if you did.

This could get ugly. The cartels are mean, murderous, and well funded. And our borders are hardly well maintained. Somewhere in the Pentagon war room, I hope they are drafting plans for a military excursion deep inside Mexico.

Two years ago, the drug cartels made a run at the Mexican government. With our help, the government survived. Remember items like this?
“Fourteen assassinations attributed to narco gangs were carried out May 20 in Mexico City, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Oaxaca. Additionally, federal army troops exchanged fire with 20 gunmen with AR-15 automatic rifles, bullet-proof vests and uniforms of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) at a checkpoint on the Apatzingán-El Alcalde road in Michoacán.”

Today, we seem headed backwards. Thu Jan 15, 2009
By Mica Rosenberg
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Corrupt officials inside Mexico’s security forces have leaked U.S. anti-drugs intelligence directly to drug traffickers to help them escape raids, a senior U.S. law enforcement agent said. A recent anti-corruption sweep showed the infiltration of Mexican police forces had reached alarming levels, with several high-ranking investigators and a presidential guardsman arrested for selling information to drug cartels.

The Democratic Party wanted illegals here so they left our borders open. President Obama still says he wants open borders. If he insists on that, he is making a mistake the likes of which he will regret for years to come. We must seal our borders and do so with troops. Armed military units. We need to secure those borders for the entire 2,000 miles. It will require a lot of money and a lot of resources but it must be done; Either that, or let’s just invade the country and take down the war lords. If we make up our mind to do it, we can. But the picture I have in my mind is not a pretty one. I see our brave soldiers defending the border with hoards of Americans behind them, crowding them, with their hands out begging for drugs. Sickening isn’t it.

But it may happen and it may end up with two governments confronting one another. Once the Mexican people come to realize that drug sales are keeping them alive, they will fight to protect their source of income. We might see the Mexican army defending the Mexican smugglers against us. Drug runners will cross the border, do what they have to do, and then retreat into Mexico where, if we try to follow, we will confronted by the Mexican army. This could be another Cambodia.

You remember Cambodia, don’t you? North Vietnam planes would fly into Cambodia and then into South Viet Nam. They would then engage in air combat or bomb our forces and when beaten, scuttle back across the border. Our democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, prevented our planes from crossing the Cambodian border in hot pursuit thereby allowing the North Vietnamese pilots to escape to return another day.

It was devastating; at least until Richard Nixon decided he had enough. Nixon removed the safe haven restriction and instructed our flyers to follow hostile aircraft into Cambodia in hot pursuit. That ended that little farce.

Of course the Democrats sucked their pacifiers and shouted how terrible this was and how terrible we were, and how we were violating the sacred borders of Cambodia, the Geneva Conference and the Holy Bible. They always do that. They whine like babies.

Fortunately, Nixon ignored them and let his order stand and that ended the threat. The North Vietnamese air force stopped using Cambodia as a “safe house” and the Democrats predictably ripped into Richard Nixon for exposing them for what they were.

Nixon had the nerve and he had right on his side. But he was roundly criticized by the liberal media and the Democratic Party. But not by me. I thanked him for two things: (1) being strong enough and smart enough to attack the enemy where he was and (2) having the guts to stare down those wimps in the other party. Eventually, Nixon was out and we ran from Viet Nam like scared rabbits, leaving behind almost TWO MILLION South Vietnamese who worked with us, to die at the hands of the North Vietnamese murderers.
The Democrats should hang their heads for that one.

This withdrawal was not because we had been beaten, it was because we cut and ran. We quit under pressure. And who was it that quit? The party that almost always quits: the Democratic Party. Remember Harry Reid two years ago telling President Bush ‘the Iraq war is over, we lost and you just won’t admit it.” Harry the wimp, I call him. But Harry is typical of Democrats. Just read your history. They are the best at cutting-and-running and the worst at fighting for what they believe in. Not ordinary patriotic Democrats of course – just the politicians they put into office.

Back to Mexico. This is the problem that is developing south of us. And remember, thanks to our national policies, Texas is now over 40% Mexican. California is about the same. New Mexico is about the same. Arizona isn’t far behind. Those four states have a combined population of about sixty million people and if 40% are Mexicans – legal and illegal- then we have 24,000,000 (twenty four million) Mexican nationals living in the four states which share borders with Mexico. How many of these people are involved with drugs? How many live in poverty. How many would be loyal to America if we had to engage in conflict with Mexico? How many would even understand why we were doing it. Who knows what they would think or what they would do.

Do you know that the local governments in some Texan communities along the Rio Grande forbid government employees from cooperating with the U.S. Immigration Service? That’s true. Just as happened in San Francisco. And over the years, our government has done nothing about it. Makes me wonder if we have the will to do what has to be done even now.

Are you getting the picture? We have a problem with no easy solution in sight.
The Mexican drug lords don’t care one whit how many people they kill or they cause to get killed, they will just buy more and more poverty-stricken Mexicans to fight for them. Sometimes we will stop them, other times they will get through. The more that get through, the stronger and more powerful the cartels will get. This is a war. Maybe a little different type of war, but a war nonetheless. What do we do about it? What can we do about it? And when do we start? Think the Democrats have the will? If so, it will be the first time. Well, somebody better to do something because the problem isn’t going away.

Certainly, an improved economy would help. Mexicans would come back, things could improve. Increased revenue back to Mexico would help the Mexican government fight off the influence of the drug cartels. But it still won’t solve the problem because it doesn’t cure the real problem that is America’s lust for drugs. Until we do something about that problem, we aren’t winning anything. It all begins at home.

And if you haven’t thought about it, here’s something else to consider. If the drug cartels in Mexico control big parts of that country, with their money and their paramilitary, they can act as a conduit for drugs from Central America, thru Mexico, and into the United States. . We sure don’t need that.

I mentioned before what I think may be the easiest and best solution for right now. Just legalize pot and let it be a controlled business. License growers and distributors (like state stores) and tax the sales. If people want to use pot that badly, let them. It will cut the heart out of the drug trade and end up saving a lot of money and a lot of lives. Might as well get it done.

Joey