Part 5: The Victims

Last year, an estimated 6,290 people were killed in México due to drug-related violence. That's double compared to 2007 and four times the amount of people killed in 2006. In only the first two months of 2009, over one thousand people were killed.

Anyone can be a victim: drug cartel associates, police officers, journalists, politicians and innocent bystanders. In one gruesome case, a man dubbed "El Pozolero" is accused of dissolving the bodies of at least 300 people in acid. The violence is slowly trickling north across the border: Arizona is now considered the kidnapping capital of the U.S. as Mexican drug cartels kidnap and extort immigrants to raise funds.

The violence is taking its toll on millions more in indirect ways. Tourism in the city of Tijuana, just across from San Diego, California, has dropped by 90 percent in the last three years. Ciudad Juárez, now considered the epicenter of drug violence in México, experienced a 20 percent drop in tourism last year. As remittances dry up, México is even more reliant on tourism to cities like Cancún and Acapulco. A few weeks ago, the U.S. State Department warned American college students not to celebrate Spring Break in Mexico.

A report from the Pentagon singled out Pakistan and México as two countries that could be in danger of a "rapid and sudden collapse. President Felipe Calderón, who added an extra $6.5 billion to México's public security budget to combat drug trafficking, has taken exception with claims his country is collapsing: "To say that México is a failed state is absolutely false. I have not lost any part — any single part — of Mexican territory."

Americans love illegal drugs.

According to the U.S. government, over 35 million Americans have used narcotics at one time. Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, rich and poor, high school drop-outs and college graduates: all are well represented in this figure. Together, we spend over $60 billion on drugs like cocaine, heroin, marijuana and meth. In exchange, Mexican drug cartels make between $18 billion and $39 billion annually. Although drug use in México has jumped by over 25 percent in the last five years, only one in 20 Mexicans uses drugs, compared to one in 10 Americans.

Days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderón implored the U.S. to curb American drug consumption if it expects México's crackdown on cartels to be successful: "We are working hard on the supply side. Working on the demand side is critical." President Obama responded by pledging $10 million to crack down on American gun traffickers who sell illegal firearms to Mexican drug cartels.

Roderick Camp of Claremont McKenna College says targeting the supply of narcotics is not enough: "We are the only party that can significantly alter the picture by addressing the consumption end of the equation, and we are not doing that."

Last year, the U.S. spent $3.2 billion on drug treatment programs. The government estimates the total economic cost of drug abuse – from health care to law enforcement – at over $180 billion.

Part 3: The Cartels

The rise of the Mexican drug cartels began December 2, 1993 in the city of Medellín, Colombia when Pablo Escobar, the leader of the powerful Medellín drug cartel was gunned down by an elite unit of the Colombian police. Starting in the 1970s, Colombian drug traffickers had introduced cocaine to the United States and reaped the benefits: by 1989, Escobar was estimated to be the seventh wealthiest man in the world. When a joint effort by the United States and Colombia finally took down Colombia's biggest cartels in the early 1990s, it was the Mexican cartels who took over their distribution routes.

There are at least seven criminal organizations involved in the drug trade in Mexico: the Gulf, Sinaloa, Juárez, Tijuana, Valencia, Colima and Oaxaca cartels. In recent years, the once-powerful Tijuana (Arellano Félix) and Juárez cartels have declined due to in-fighting and a U.S.-led crackdown, prompting the the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels to vie for dominance.

For muscle, the Gulf Cartel relies on Los Zetas, a paramilitary group composed of elite ex-soldiers, many of whom once served in anti-narcotics forces while the Sinaloa Cartel draws on Los Negros, a smaller but no less ruthless death squad. The Sinaloa Cartel supplements their paramilitary forces by bribing law enforcement officials and politicians who in turn use their power to target the Gulf Cartel in the name of public safety.

The Mexican cartels have also adopted the Colombian cartels use of terrorism to break down its enemies and clear the way for their illegal trafficking. By murdering high profile victims such as the head of the national anti-drug force and by dumping decapitated and tortured bodies in front of schools, the Mexican cartels hope to paralyze any potential opposition, whether from officials or ordinary citizens.

Next: The Consumers

Part 2: The Good Guys

For many police in México, there are two career paths: work for drug cartels or live under the constant threat of death from drug cartels.

Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñonez made the wrong choice. Last month, the retired Army general began working as a high-ranking anti-drug official near Cancún, in the southern state of Quintana Roo. He was killed on his first day on the job. The suspect? Cancún's police chief, Francisco Velasco, who was arrested along with five other officers for orchestrating the murder.

For years, drug cartels have won over local police with deep pockets and heavy firepower. Last year, federal officials twice confiscated the firearms of the Tijuana police department. In many parts of Mexico, anti-trafficking operations are now run entirely by the federally controlled military and police. International and Mexican experts agree that Mexican police are more susceptible to corruption because they are under-trained and under-paid.

Tijuana Secretary of Public Security Luis Javier Algorri: "Local police aren't designed to combat organized crime. Officers are easily found at home, it's easy to see what shifts they work. They can be threatened or bribed."

But local cops aren't the only ones being paid off. Late last year, Mexico's former drug czar – the man in charge of the country's anti-drug operations – was arrested for accepting $450,000 in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. With both local and federal law enforcement compromised and a worsening cycle of deadly attacks and counter-attacks, many are now asking if México could soon collapse into a civil war.

Political analyst José Antonio Crespo: "The army used to be seen as the government's great deterrent. But now what is the big stick that can be used against the cartels?"

Next: The Cartels

Part 1 of 5: The Journalists

Why aren't more journalists reporting on México's violent drug war? Perhaps, it's because they're being murdered.

In the last eight years, more than 45 journalists have been killed in México, making it the second most dangerous country to be a journalist. Number one? Iraq.

Newspapers, radio and television reporters have been covering the drug trade in México for decades. But coverage that was once about a few drug traffickers now includes stories about businessmen, politicians, government officials, judges, police and members of the military. "In México, organized crime can mean the traffickers, the police, the government or the people in the office buildings," warns Pedro Torres, an editor at El Diario newspaper in the border city of Ciudad Juarez just across from El Paso, Texas.

The press has been making enemies and those enemies have taken aim at the press. Alfredo Quijano, of the El Norte newspaper in Monterrey, believes the murders and kidnappings of so many journalists is censoring the news: "We are not publishing everything we know – which is not good – but we are trying to survive."

Even what gets published can benefit the drug trade. Traffickers have begun to hijack the headlines by committing spectacular acts of terrorism, such as mass be-headings, in order to use the media to broadcast their agenda. Author Luis Astorga: "The gangsters use these bloody tactics to try and win a psychological war against their enemy and sow terror in the population."

Next: The Good Guys

(image by Prometeo Lucero [aka Prom] via flickr)

Three weeks ago, nearly a thousand punks and metal heads took over the Plaza de Armas in Querétaro, central México, to rid the park of "emos." Outnumbered, the mob's victims could do little but huddle together and try to absorb the punches and taunts. Only a few days later, a similar confrontation took place a hundred miles away in Mexico City.

Mexicans, long accustomed to disturbing news of violent crime, were shocked by television coverage of the mass violence. Over the last few years, emo, a fashion and music style defined by androgynous make-up, angular haircuts, tight clothes and a pop-punk sound, has become popular with teens throughout México largely due to the spread of MySpace and the global appeal of such bands as My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confessional. The wave has lifted Mexican groups like Pxndx (Panda), Insite and Avella Ink into the spotlight. But not everyone in this often traditional and sometimes machista society is keen on this gender and genre bending youth movement.

News reports cite homophobia as a likely factor in the attacks. Many anti-emo videos, blogs and bulletins contain slogans like "Movimiento Anti Emosexual" and "Emo is gay."

Some have blamed Telehit VJ Kristoff for provoking anti-emo sentiment with angry rants and emo-bashing sketches. (Telehit is owned by the powerful Mexican broadcaster Televisa.) After the attacks, Kristoff responded: "I may not agree with the emo philosophy, but I would die to defend their right to express themselves."

Last weekend, demonstrations were held in Mexico City and Tijuana in solidarity with the victims of the violent attacks, but tensions remain high. Few are certain as to what sparked the violence and whether there is yet more to come.

K-Paz de la Sierra

The discovery of Jose Luis Aquino's lifeless body last Wednesday marked the end of a bloody week in México. The trumpet player for Los Conde had been bound and badly beaten, his head covered with a plastic bag. Aquino was the third regional music star murdered last week.

Zayda Peña, the 28-year-old leader of Zayda y Los Culpables, was killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Known as "La Dama del Sentimiento," Peña was shot in the back and survived only to be shot again – this time, mortally – while recovering in a hospital room.

Hours later that same day, Sergio Gómez of duranguense band K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped in Morelia, Michoacán. He was later found tortured and strangled to death.

The three killings come a little over a year after banda singer Valentín Elizalde, "El Gallo de Oro," was shot to death leaving a concert hall in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The motives for all four murders have not been confirmed, but some speculate that at least two are the handiwork of drug cartels.

But unlike Elizalde, last week's victims did not perform narcocorridos, but up-tempo romantic songs, prompting Mexican authorities to speculate that organized crime is now targeting mainstream acts. Political analyst Sergio Sarmiento sees a trend: "The murdered artists are no different than the rest of the victims of crime in our country...Their deaths however, have the advantage of getting the people's attention."

This year, over one thousand men, women and children have been murdered in México by crime syndicates involved in drug trafficking, according to Mexican law enforcement officials.

Update below.

Mexican authorities report they have confiscated more than $200 million in U.S. currency from a luxury home in Mexico City. The stash of mostly $100 bills weighed over 4,500 pounds, apparent revenues from the sale of meth in the United States by a drug ring allegedly run by a naturalized Mexican citizen of Chinese descent. Two Chinese nationals were among the seven arrested during the raid.

Mexican officials say the drug traffickers purchased the drug's raw materials, pseudoephedrine acetate, in India, imported these chemicals illegally to China, then shipped them to Mexico where they were processed into meth and finally smuggled into and sold in the U.S. The proceeds from these sales were then transported back into Mexico, mainly in $10 and $20 bills, before being converted into Benjamins.

If confirmed, it would be the largest seizure of drug trafficking assets in history.

(More photos of the raid courtesy of the Mexican attorney general's office.)

Update (7/2/7/2007)

In the months following this report, the alleged ringleader, Zhenli Ye Gon, has claimed that the money confiscated in his home had nothing to do with the illegal drug trade.

Instead, Ye Gon has fingered the heads of the ruling political party in Mexico, the PAN, saying they blackmailed him into using his home as a vault for safekeeping millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds.

Ye Gon, who has filed for political asylum in the U.S., was arrested earlier this week in Wheaton, Maryland. His girlfriend was also detained this week in Las Vegas. Ye Gon's wife was one of the seven detained during the initial raid of his Mexico home.

(image via bwalsh)

According to the British newspaper The Observer and The Dallas Morning News, agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, continued working with a Mexican informant even after learning that said recruit was engaged in a murder spree in the El Paso-Juarez area on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, is believed to have murdered over a dozen people while working for ICE – at one point, allegedly while wearing a wire. According to press reports, when Peyro attempted to also kill an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), as well as the agent's family, a senior DEA officer in El Paso, Texas, filed a formal complaint with his counterpart at ICE. The same DEA agent, Sandy Gonzalez, now claims he was forced into retirement after filing his complaint.

In recent years, Mexican organized crime took control over the flow of narcotics into the United States, leading to an increase in drug-trafficking-related violence in border cities. According to the DEA, "West Texas serves as the gateway for narcotics destined to major metropolitan areas in the U.S., which is commonly referred to as the El Paso/Juarez Corridor." The illegal drug trade imposes costs on the U.S. government estimated at $70 billion each year.