With Colombia my friend Simone went in heavy but Mexico is a real mess. Let's start with
the basics. Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is the 14th largest country
in the world and the 11th most populated, with its 126.000.000 inhabitants. Politically,
it s a federal republic composed of 31 states, plus the capital district "Mexico City". Located
in North America, the country is bordered to the north by the United States, to the
south by Belize and Guatemala, to the east by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea
and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. From an economic point of view, looking at the
national GDP, we could consider Mexico the 16th largest economy in the world, but if
we dig deeper we find several negative socio-economic indicators, such as high rates of poverty
and inequality that have increased during the pandemic. And indeed, there are quite
a few Mexicans who claim that the country's main problem is not drugs, but that this is
just a consequence of another omnipresent factor: poverty. According to studies conducted
in 2020 by CONEVAL (National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy),
44% of the population, or over 55 (55.7) million people lived in poverty. Despite the serious
lack of civil and human rights, including one of the highest homicide rates in the world,
Mexico's political system, strange as it may seem, is that of a representative democracy.
And it's maybe thanks to the process of liberalization that the country experienced between the 1970s
and the new century that criminal groups have found fertile ground for their illicit operations.
Among them stand out the cartels that, as the name suggests, are criminal associations
with the aim of promoting and controlling the activities of drug trafficking but also
weapons, migrants and organs. Thanks to the expansion of these groups, the weight of Mexico
in the criminal world has increased a lot. Originally, the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI), which ruled for 71 years (from 1929 to 2000), held a political monopoly in
an authoritarian system, shaping over time what's known as the "perfect dictatorship".
The executive power was predominant over the legislative and judicial. So a fake democratic
system developed, based on non-competitive elections, in which the state greatly reduced
civil liberties. In doing so, the party controlled most of the economic and social sectors of
the country, denying the possibility of emergence of social movements, ending up dictating the
discipline of illegal activities such as drug trafficking. Over the years, social phenomena
such as urbanization, student and workers movements, internal migration, industrialaization
and increased levels of education, however, have opened a breach in the Mexican central
power, inaugurating in the second half of the 20th century a difficult process of expansion
of political space. In addition, a series of reforms of the electoral system (begun
in 1977) allowed other political forces, such as the conservative right, the National Action
Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), full electoral competition
in the municipal, state and national spheres. This democratic transition reached its peak
in 2000 with the presidential victory of Vicente Fox Quesada. At the same time, the power structure
changed, with a clearer separation of state powers and greater d centralization in favor
of local and municipal governments. However, this drastic change has created new opportunities
for profit and investment for narcos. Access to the free market and the elimination of
fare barriers, especially after the entry into force of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, tripled the level of trade with the United States and opened
new ways for trade in illegal goods. In addition, the policies that followed eroded the Mexican
social fabric, greatly reducing the income of about 50% of the Mexican population, which
fell below the poverty level, pushing millions of people, especially young people, to enter
the illegal economy. Another deep-rooted problem is the weakness, if not inexistence, of the
State in the internal areas of the country, where successive governments have always been
unable to deal with the threat of criminal organizations, preferring instead to join
them, with the consequence that the most fragile social categories, such as women, children,
indigenous peoples and migrants, pay the price. The increase in the number of cases of enforced
disappearances, in which the state authorities are often involved, contributes to a climate
of total mistrust of the police and justice agencies, which appear unable to provide def
nitive answers. Among the most easily corruptible subjects are the municipal authorities, who
often underpaid by the federal government, are at the mercy of the criminal power of
cartels and organized gangs. For this reason, in the media, for years the country has been
defined with the term "narco-state" or "narco-democracy" and this comes from the combination of narcos,
political power and law enforcement. A dangerous link that results in silence, impunity and
connivence of those who should protect Mexicans in front of evident facts Think that in the
Global Ranking of Impunity 2020 - ndice Global de Impunidad (IGI) - Mexico occupies 60th
place out of 69 countries analyzed, with a rate of impunity 10 times higher than the
global average. Let's take a look at some recent cases: in 2018 in Acapulco, all members
of the local police department were arrested for suspected ties to organized crime; and
in 2019 Genaro Garcia Luna, federal police chief and then minister of public security,
ended up in jail. Motivation? Turning a blind eye to the movement of drug shipments in the
territory. In the rare cases when investigations are opened, they always go slowly and end
up shedding light in the wrong places. But to understand why drug trafficking finds such
fertile ground in Mexico, we can look at a geographical map: the country is strategically
located, representing an international hub for illegal substances, natural resources,
weapons and people, many of them from the South American continent. Moreover, the particular
conformation of the territory, with mangroves, huge deserts in the north, tropical forests
and large mountain ranges, including the eastern and western Sierra Madre, allows criminal
groups to hide from the government army and establish areas where they can freely cultivate
marijuana and opium poppy (from which, let's remember, heroin is processed). Otherwise,
labs are set up for the production of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl or methamphetamine,
both of which are in great demand in the United States, a country that for years has been
immersed in an epidemic of opium overdoses. But Mexico's long coastline also facilitates
under-the-table operations, and port cities such as Veracruz, L zaro C rdenas, or Manzanillo
have become central bastions for many groups, facilitating the entry of drugs, weapons,
and drug processing chemicals into their ports. It's likely that on many of the containers
that regularly arrive there is a dragon printed, certainly not in plain sight but with an undeniable
origin. Yes, because businessmen and traders affiliated to the Chinese triads that send
the materials destined to be transformed into synthetic drugs (such as ephedrine), in order
to evade controls in the country of origin, have for some time moved their labs to India
and from there send the products by ship to Mexico, where they are skilfully synthesized.
Okay, but how does the United States influence the Mexican criminal situation? We have a
fork in the road: the first road is the one of the flourishing U.S. market and its endless
demand for narcotics; the second is the one of the prohibitionist policy that the various
U.S. governments have tried, for at least a century, to instill in the leaders of Mexico
City. Over time, the so-called war on drugs and Washington's interference in Mexican affairs
has shown itself through unilateral actions of border interdiction (such as Operation
Intercept of 1969) and in the financing of aerial fumigation campaigns of opium and marijuana
crops (see Operation Condor of 1975-76). The attention of the White House towards Mexico
was also expressed by planning undercover operations of U.S. federal agents, in particular
the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). Since the 90s, however, security cooperation
has grown, culminating in 2008 with the entry into force of the Iniciativa M rida, the most
serious attempt to put on paper at a bilateral level the fight against drug cartels. However,
if we are talking about trafficking, we must mention another scourge: that of the illegal
traffic of migrants. According to the most reliable estimates, every year at least 2
million people, including children traveling alone in search of fortune, cross or try to
cross the border into the United States. That's why, as the Los Angeles Times reports, nearly
25% of the 45 million immigrants in North America are of Mexican origin. Also in this
case the activity is under the control of criminal organizations in complicity with
Mexican law enforcement agencies. Over the years, there have been cases where migrants
were arrested by police officers and then sold to various criminal groups with the goal
of obtaining ransoms from their families. And I leave you to imagine the end of those
who couldn't afford such sums. The numbers speak of 84,000 desaparecidos two years ago,
some of whom disappeared in acid. With all these data, it won't sound strange to you
to hear that Mexico is one of the most violent countries in the world. According to Mexico's
National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), as of 2018, the country has maintained
a rate of 29 murders per 100k inhabitants. A rate higher even than countries that have
historically had a higher rate, such as El Salvador, with its 20 homicides per 100k inhabitants
in 2020, or Colombia, with a rate of less than 24. To give you just an idea of the magnitude,
even though one shouldn't compare countries with such distant and different geographical
contexts, in Italy in 2019, the homicide rate was 0.53 per 100k inhabitants (ISTAT). However
Among the most affected areas are the states of Michoac n, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas where
clashes between gangs are almost the order of the day. Often these clashes also end up
involving civilians, as happened during the massacre of Ay tzinapa (26/09/2014), with
the disappearance of a bus carrying 43 students to the city of Iguala: the boys were stopped
by the police, arrested on charges of wanting to join a protest and finally handed over
to the Guerreros Unidos clan who killed them and made the bodies disappear. Their murder
can be explained if we consider that the students of Escu la Norm l Rur l are people of humble
origins and actively interested in the socio-political problems that afflict their land, to the point
that in recent years hundreds of social fighters have emerged from those classrooms. A criminalization
unfortunately remained unpunished due to the obstructionism of many politicians, local
authorities and journalists who spread false information about the incident, preventing
the truth from coming out. Or think of the massacre of San Fernando, by the Cartel de
Los Zetas in the summer of 2010, where 72 of the 73 migrants bound for the United States
were kidnapped and brutally killed. The same fate then happened to the judge in charge
of the investigation. And you may ask, has justice been done? No, because it's worth
repeating, federal institutions and drug traffickers go hand in hand. Talking about violence in
Mexico is also the same as talking about gender violence: the data at our disposal speak for
themselves: according to a government report in 2020, ? of Mexican women aged 15 years
and older have experienced violence at least once in their lives and also in the same year
feminicide has reached worrying heights, with a record of over 3000 women killed (3723).
All this happens with almost complete silence of the judicial authorities: evidence disappeared,
forensic analysis that remain pending, abandoned lines of investigation make it seriously difficult
to fight the problem of violence against women. But now, in order to better understand this
whole situation of chaos, we should talk about the real lords of the country: the drug cartels.
Even an uninformed person knows that in the 90s the throne of the "king of cocaine" was
occupied by the infamous Pablo Escobar who together with the rival cartel of Cali dominated
the international traffic of cocaine, but in the last two decades, the supremacy of
Mexican organizations in drug trafficking has replaced the Colombian one, becoming the
main regional threat. And where do they practice their dirty operations, like smuggling tons
of drugs and thousands of illegal migrants? Of course, the U.S. border! And they do it
using extreme and unconditional violence as a instrument of terror and control of society.
However, the border is not accidental, because the big cartels are well aware that the dominance
of this area guarantees profits of millions of dollars with which they constantly self-finance
their activities. And how were these realities born? In 2006, in Mexico, there were 7 cartels:
Mil nio, Sinaloa, Juarez, Tijuana, the Gulf Cartel, La Familia Michoacana and the Pacific
Cartel. Their birth was facilitated by the proximity of the United States, the main global
economy as well as the largest consumer of drugs. Simple law of supply and demand. Although
the production and consumption of substances in Mexico - especially those derived from
the opium poppy and marijuana - date back to the end of the 19th century, it was after
World War II that things began to take a worrying turn. In the 1960s, drugs such as those mentioned
above began to be produced in the states of Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Michoac n and
Guerrero, regions from which, particularly Sinaloa, it was easy to creep into the States.
One of the fundamental changes then occurred in the 1980s, when Colombian narcos shifted
their coca routes from the Caribbean to Mexico, helping the emergence of one of the first
major organizations, the Guadalajara Cartel, led by Miguel ngel F lix Gallardo (nicknamed
"Godfather," "El jefe de jefes/The boss of bosses"). Gallardo was originally an agent
of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police. El Jefe quickly became not only the first Mexican
to act as a link with the Colombian cartels in their heyday, but also the first to become
a point of reference for the Medellin Cartel. This link allowed him to request a new form
of payment: if Gallardo was paid in cash for the transport of cocaine from the Mexican
border to the States, from a certain moment onwards he began to withhold 50% of the transported
product, a fact that allowed the narcos of the Guadalajara Cartel to transform themselves
from transporters into distributors, thereby greatly increasing their profits. Although
it was not the only organization present, this cartel managed to gain a monopoly of
the major marijuana and opium producing areas as well as the main access points to the US
border, such as the states of Baja California and Sonora. And how could he act undisturbed?
Simple, in addition to his affiliates, politicians and entire police departments protected him,
remember? In 1985 Gallardo's thugs managed to kidnap and kill Enrique Camarena, a DEA
agent who was investigating the organization's trafficking. The incident provoked a more
active involvement of the U.S. agents that ended with the arrest of the main leaders
of the cartel and the fragmentation of the same. With Guadalajara out of the way in the
1980s, three other large monopolistic groups remained: the Tijuana, Ju rez and Sinaloa
Cartels. The competition between them triggered a violent conflict from which the latter emerged
the winner, gaining control of the main routes. Without forgetting its more international
dimension compared to its competitors, its overwhelming power derived mainly from the
cultivation of the "Golden Triangle", between the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua,
and its fiercest contrasts were with the rival Juarez cartel, historically located in the
strategic border city of the same name, which experienced its period of maximum splendor
in the mid-1990s. Despite its strong connections with local clan groups, the group ruled by
Amado Carrillo Fuentes (nicknamed "The Lord of the Skies", due to the intensive use of
airplanes to bring drugs into the US), however, ceded ground to the Sinaloa cartel, which
managed to wrest control of the border city from him and confine him to the State of Chihuahua.
For a time, Carrillo Fuentes managed to create a "federation" of alliances and non-aggression
pacts to break off hostilities between most of the rival factions but at the time of his
death in July 1997, many of the former partners became independent and came back to fight
for the spoils, leading to the dissolution of the already fragile arrangement in 2004.
What happens from that time to the present day is another story but for my sanity and
yours as well, it's best that I end here. If you have followed me up to this point,
I thank you for your attention and see you in the next video. Ciao!