The Mexico Situation

Over the past couple of years, I have been watching, with great interest and alarm, the increase in drug cartel related violence in Mexico. Most alarming is how brazen they are about it and how close to our border much of this is occurring. Killings of police and journalists are common, and gang members have resorted to barbaric tactics including decapitations and killing their enemies' relatives in hopes of intimidating opposition. They have armored vehicles, explosive devices and grenade launchers. Experts believe that the Gulf cartel and its former allies, the Zetas, are battling for trafficking routes in the northern border states and trying to get the military patrols out of the way.

 In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a border city located just across the river from El Paso, Texas, a drug cartel vowed to kill an officer every 48 hours until police chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, resigned. He initially refused to do so. On February 20, 2009, after the third murder of one of his officers, the chief resigned. The cartel also threatened to decapitate Ciudad Juárez' Mayor José Reyes Ferriz and his family unless he ended his efforts to clean up the corruption in the city's police department. The note told the mayor, who had homes in El Paso, Texas and Cuidad Juárez, that they were willing cross the border into the U.S. to kill them. Around the same time, gunmen shot at a car in Chihuahua Gov. José Reyes Baeza's motorcade, killing a bodyguard and wounding two agents. After these inccidents, the federal government took over the functions of police chief in Ciudad Juárez.


On July 1, 2010, there was a shootout between rival drug gangs on a deserted road between the villages of Tubutama and Saric, just 12 miles south of the U.S. (Arizona)-Mexican border, leaving 21 people dead and 6 wounded. Nearby Nogales, which is across the border from Nogales, Arizona, had 135 murders in 2009 and has had 131 murders so far this year.

In May 2009, a journalist from Torreón, in the state of Coahuila,which borders Texas was abducted and killed by kidnappers that investigators suspect were members of the Zetas drug gang. In January 2010, gunmen killed 10 young people in an attack in a bar Torreón.  In May 2010, eight young people were killed in an attack in another Torreón bar. Several of those who were killed were students and did not appear to have any links to drugs.  On Sunday, July 18, 2010, gunmen associated with a cartel burst into a birthday party and opened fire, killing at least 17 people.

On March 18 and 19, 2010, in Monterrey, Mexico, drug cartel members hijacked trucks and  buses, then used the vehicles to block four lane highways in an effort to disrupt army operations near the U.S.-Mexico border. Also in March 2010, gangs in the northeastern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas used automatic weapons and erected blockades at checkpoints to prevent soldiers from coming to the aid of soldiers already under attack.  

More recently, a drug gang actually used a car bomb in a planned attack on law enforcement. On July 16, 2010 the gang dressed a bound, wounded man in a police uniform and called in a false report of an officer shot. When the police arrived, the gang exploded a car killing the decoy, a rescue worker and two police officers.

Then there was the March 13, 2010 attack on the U.S. Consulate employees as they headed home to El Paso after attending a birthday party in Cuidad Juárez. Jesús Ernesto Chávez, leader of the Barrio Azteca organization, a violent gang originating in Texas prisons with members on both sides of the border and which supplies contract killers to the Juarez drug cartel, was arrested for masterminding the killings of U.S. Consulate staffer Lesley Ann Enriquez and her husband. 

There are many other incidents involving mass executions, shootouts between rival gangs, shootouts between gangs and the police, discoveries of mass graves and reports of gangs entering weddings and parties to kill or kidnap people. Almost 25,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón took office at the end of 2006. This violence could easily spill over into the U.S. and is a very dangerous threat to our national security. It appears that simply cracking down on drug cartels will not work, as much of this violence started when Mexico's president began doing just that. The U.S. has poured $1.6 billion into Mexico's efforts to stop the activity. The cartels have infiltrated every level of the Mexican government and there are allegations that the Ms. Enriquez, the U.S. Consulate staffer murdered in Cuidad Juárez, may have been compromised. We are sending 1200 National Guard troops to help patrol the border with the dual purpose of curbing illegal immigration and drug trafficking. But that is not enough. We need to do two additional things:


1. Use unmanned drone aircraft to patrol the borders. This will help the Border Patrol and National Guard locate the smugglers quickly.

2. Take the profit motive out of smuggling marijuana by legalizing it. Our experience during prohibition taught us that banning alcohol created a black market for the product and resulted in the growth of gangs and violence. The government can also then tax it and add to our revenue.

How shall we pay for this? As noted,the tax on marijuana sales will help pay for it, as will the restored revenue from the Bush tax cuts, which are scheduled to sunset soon. Using the restored revenue for this purpose is an investment in the security of our country and our way of life.