Drugs, Murder and Mexico

Well, I know where I'm going for vacation.

You and every frat boy in America.

It's amazing that no matter how low my opinion of this world is, there's always something to push it lower.

I fucking hate colorado

Where's the legalize murder part?

Thread title looks like its ripped straight off Fox News.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100827/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico

i've thought about starting a thread about the sickening drug violence in mexico and elsewhere and how the government passes the blame to drug users and drug users pass the blame to the government while drug cartels revel in the market created by the outlawing of drugs and the money they make from the users and nothing ever changes and people like those migrant workers (and presumably this prosecutor) die in increasingly horrible ways, but based on a couple of "i don't care" responses i've had when i asked this serious question before maybe it would be a waste of time? anyway i think our attitude towards those who suffer south of the border because of this is fairly abhorrent on all fronts and i've learned to not even debate this with close friends because they feel i'm being a dick for even bringing the topic up because they enjoy drugs occasionally.

I think this is kind of a good reason not to use drugs, at least ones that you don't know where they came from, regardless of what you think about legalization. Blood diamonds, blood drugs, etc.

i honestly think people who use hard drugs (which are trafficked by the kind of folks who go around murdering people just for the hell of it) don't give a single shit or if they do they blame the market created by the government. of course if they really cared they might not use at all, but there is always going to be resistance to government laws regarding this issue, which is understandable because the government is so wrong on this issue.

I read yesterday where 28,000 people have been killed in the mexican drug war since 2006 and was just kinda stunned.

Habitual drug users deflecting responsibility shocker

But yeah obviously the govt does bear a huge amount of responsibility for this.

i think about this a lot but a) i don't really know what to think, entirely and b) really don't know what to say

i have read something recently about mexico flirting with the idea of legalizing marijuana unilaterally. it's mexicans who are being murdered, after all.

i know a couple of folks in l.a. who have grimly mentioned shit that has gone down with relatives in mexico, almost matter-of-factly.

The body count in Mexico stood at 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 reported in 2007, officials said, with over 1400 in Ciudad Juárez alone.[27][28] The population of Ciudad Juárez had to change their daily routine and many try to stay home in the evening hours. Public life is almost paralyzed out of fear of being kidnapped or hit by a stray bullet. On 20 February 2009, the U.S. State Department announced in an updated travel alert that "Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008." [29] On 12 March 2009, police found "at least seven" partially buried bodies in the outskirts of the city, close to the US-Mexican border. Five severed heads were discovered in ice boxes, along with notes to rivals in the drug-wars. Beheadings, attacks on the police and shootings are common in some regions.[30] In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.[31] Patients were lined up in the corridor and gunned down in the early evening. On September 3, 2009 the Associated Press reported that the day before gunmen broke down the door of the El Aliviane drug rehabilitation center and lined their victims up to a wall shooting 17 dead. The authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers, the government is struggling to maintain Ciudad Juárez's police force. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.[32] In late 2008 one murder victim was found near a school hanging from a fence with a pig's mask on his face and another one was found beheaded hanging from a bridge in one of the busier streets of the city.

smoke local pot. and leave everything else alone. unless the canadians start making cocaine or something. the 72 bodies in a room thing...i mean, what can you even say? its just so awful in every possible way. i blame this country so much already for so many things...its a long list. i don't even know what to say.

i sort of attempted to tackle this in a trolling manner on the cocaine C or D thread, but i think it was generally ignored in favor of people relating war stories, i.e. "that time i did coke was a real good time, classic."

to repeat:

In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.[31] Patients were lined up in the corridor and gunned down in the early evening.

message being, what exactly? don't try to quit or we will kill you?

Are there any good explanations for why the violence has so sharply increased? Is there something driving drug profits up at the moment?

i got in a big argt once with a friend about drug legalization, my points being basically that making something illegal doesn't erase demand, so the "business model" of suppliers necessarily involves violence; and that our strategy for the past 50-odd years has to be considered a failure, so why not try something else that seems to have worked ok in other places.

the counter-argument was basically "you watch the wire"

GBX just asked me to post this link. I actually had it open already in another tab. It's insane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez

In September 2009, 18 patients at a drug rehabilitation clinic called El Aliviane were massacred in a turf battle.

What does this even mean? OOH it makes it sound like the turf battle just happened to take place on the property of the clinic, OTOH "massacre" suggests deliberately killing the patients but doesn't sound like a "turf battle".

yeah that particular aspect of this is nuts, E.

i have several particularly sharp and otherwise decent friends who indulge in the odd bit of cocaine use, and what can you really say? saying stuff like this comes off as preachy and playing right into the hands of those who want to keep drugs illegal, one could argue. and yet...no.

The situation in Juarez nuts and ridiculous that more attention hasn't been paid to it. I think Jennifer Lopez made a movie about it a couple years ago called "Boderlands" iirc but I don't ever remember seeing it in theaters and suspect it went straight to video.

what proportion of american drug consumption is "the odd bit of cocaine use" vs. crack addicts, who i don't feel comfortable blaming for any of this

have you read 2666 by roberto bolano? it takes place in a fictional version of juarez and this is one of the main threads the novel focuses on. it's really grim.

How does what's going on now compare to what went on in Colombia/Miami in the 80s? Because I seem to remember that what happened then was the result of a price spike which in turn was the result of an enforcement crackdown.

Omar - I have not but I will do. The whole thing fascinates me because it's just so unbelievable.

This is all worth reading: http://www.theawl.com/author/john-murray

Last week in Ciudad Juarez, the Federal Police received an emergency call from a payphone explaining that a police officer had been shot and was lying wounded on the Avenue 16 de Septiembre, a street named for the day of Mexican independence from the Spanish. Several federal police officers and an emergency team of paramedics arrived to tend to the injured officer. A TV crew arrived on the scene around the same time. As the officers and doctors gathered around the body to assess the damage, nearby members of the Juarez cartel used a cell phone to detonate a bomb hidden in a parked car at the intersection. The blast killed two Federales, a doctor and an emergency technician, and left 9 other people wounded from shrapnel.

sheesh

has anyone read the charles bowden ciudad juarez books? they're on my list, as i've read all of his other books (down by the river is esp. good) but i haven't read them yet. i think he has two?

i've had many (too many to count) students whose lives have been affected by this shit.

No! Amanda can you email me some book recs? Or put them here? I'll get the one you mentioned. I've only read news articles on it but never any full books.

have you read 2666 by roberto bolano? it takes place in a fictional version of juarez and this is one of the main threads the novel focuses on. it's really grim.

― ('_') (omar little), Friday, 27 August 2010 21:58 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Those 200odd pages of detailed descriptions of murder victims was the most intense thing i've ever read.

Unfortunately I know little-to-nothing about the situation going on, so I don't really know what to say other than f this world

one woman did an entire semester's worth of speeches about growing up in a town where drug lords bought the bridges, paved the roads, rebuilt the schools, and imposed a strict 9pm curfew on everyone who lived there. violators of the curfew were all shot and killed.

here's one
http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/files/2010/04/MurderCity.jpg

one woman did an entire semester's worth of speeches about growing up in a town where drug lords bought the bridges, paved the roads, rebuilt the schools, and imposed a strict 9pm curfew on everyone who lived there. violators of the curfew were all shot and killed.

wow, Amanda

gonna go seek that book out, thanks LL

yeah, it was intense.

not about ciudad juarez, and a little dated, but really well written and interesting
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413VMWXBKRL._SL500_.jpg

glad this is finally a thread. it's astounding how little public attention this gets.

the counter-argument was basically "you watch the wire"

I felt like the wire could have done this better...haven't seen the episodes recently but I remember the drug-zone experienment worked *so* perfectly, was *so* successful that it was just sorta absurd.

How does what's going on now compare to what went on in Colombia/Miami in the 80s? Because I seem to remember that what happened then was the result of a price spike which in turn was the result of an enforcement crackdown.

I don't think the death tolls were anywhere in today's range

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/12/quiet-shift-mexicos-drug-war/

It all started with something that is by now horrifyingly routine: a YouTube video of the gory execution of a Mexican policeman by a gang of narcotraficantes. Posted on July 22, it begins with the interrogation of the policeman, who was from the northern state of Durango, by masked gangsters employed, in this case, by one of Mexico’s most powerful trafficking groups, the Zetas. Such interrogations have been circulated on the Internet before, and, as here, they often end in death. However, in the course of this particular video the policeman stated that the director of a federal prison in Durango was in the habit of releasing and arming certain prisoners at night, so that they could commit murders aimed, broadly speaking, at the Zetas. The recent massacre of seventeen people attending a birthday party in the neighboring state of Coahuila was the work of these temporarily sprung assassins, the policeman said, as were two other mass killings earlier this year.

eh, i think the scenes of hamsterdam at night were p horrific, also there was still murder and death (rip johnny). the open prostitution freaked me out more than the drugs though.

another student actually taught me about the zetas a few years ago. i had never heard of them, and she was from nuevo laredo, so she grew up around a LOT of drug-fueled violence.

this is a book bowden coauthored with an artist/architect? i would rather read the other one, but would like to see this one

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EHZlrvTnL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

my first experiences with learning about how the drug trade affects people beyond the users and sellers were when i was in colombia (bogota) in 1996, which is also the year that colombia was 'decertified' by the us in their cooperation in the "war on drugs"

what a farce that was

to answer harbl's q, i imagine casual, semi-regular, or recreational cocaine use makes up most of the use in this country, more than the use by addicts? i could be vv wrong. who knows about crack, though...

This was talked about all the time in the Las Cruces/El Paso area...I forget it's not on everyone else's radar. My brother who lived in Juarez for a couple years says this stuff is "overblown" but I think he was referring to some of the more seemingly hyperbolic ideas that were around like "and they will always make a necklace out of your dried nipples" and not the situation in general. Actually, I should ask what he meant by that at all, he was on a mission at the time & not even allowed to read the news.

gonna go seek that book out, thanks LL

― ('_') (omar little), Friday, August 27, 2010 5:11 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

same - thank you

it is hard to understand how anyone could read any of these stories and think this is 'overblown'. I mean, jeez, imagine if we found 72 bodies somewhere in america.

well it's just like this situation didn't really hit the national news heavy until those people from the embassy were killed

A lot of the violence in the city has been characterized by this kind of symbolism. Bodies have been dumped on many occasions in lots and playgrounds near schools, with children gathering around the crime scene to watch as police bag and remove the dead. Drug rehab clinics have been the scenes of mass murders. People are shot down in broad daylight during the normal hubub of everyday life, on main streets and in restaurants. Considering this, it's clear that what's happening isn't just a war between rival cartels, but a campaign of terror against the local population. The murdered groom's father conveyed perfectly the effect of this kind of violence to the El Paso Times: "I'm confused, frustrated and in despair. My wife, she is devastated." There really aren't any better emotions you could hope to inspire in a population you're trying to control.

[...]

A week before Easter, typewritten messages spread around Porvenir that anyone who hadn't left the area by Easter Sunday would be killed. Citizens packed up and left in droves. While no such large scale attack ever came, the assault on the social climate of the community was enough. Residents were threatened with death on the most holy day of the Catholic calendar. Like this week's wedding murders, the sanctuary of religion was directly challenged when the main church in town was burned to the ground on Good Friday.

I felt like the wire could have done this better...haven't seen the episodes recently but I remember the drug-zone experienment worked *so* perfectly, was *so* successful that it was just sorta absurd.

― iatee, Friday, August 27, 2010 5:14 PM Bookmark

Wait what? This is not what happened at all.

i was searching for a picture of Renssellaer Lee's White Labyrinth: Cocaine and Political Power, but all I found was this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51d8YjGsArL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Surely things have been written since these books about cocaine and the Andean region in the 80s/90s, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with.

okay I remember it being a grimey area but basically just turning into some nice market economy where people didn't shoot each other

xp

smoke local pot. and leave everything else alone.

^^^this is how I roll. thankfully in the Bay Area local weed is abundant. always thought cocaine was morally indefensible for all kinds of reasons, the trade being one of them.

One thing that fascinates me is how the cocaine industry, the heroin industry, and the meth industry are so different from each other. Marijuana is another story because it is a plant and doesn't require the heavy processing or chemical component that the other drugs require in order to be put onto the market. I agree wholeheartedly with Scott and Shakey in the "buy local weed, avoid everything else" philosophy.

No one asked, but Methland is a very readable book about how greedy companies, declining farmtowns, waning industry, and an influx of immigrant workers took its toll on the people (and law enforcement) of one Iowa town.

The writing is VERY annoying at times, but the book's content is interesting.

http://www.poststar.com/app/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/methland-198x300.jpg

perhaps i'm incredibly naive but i would like to believe that IRL friends or ilxors i've seen who have bragged about using coke (and other drugs with morally indefensible industries producing them) on other threads might read stuff like this and decide to back off for those reasons.

yeah, don't do coke, ppl

and listen i've seen people i *like* here who have mentioned it, like they do it occasionally, and it kinda breaks my heart y'all.

i feel more strongly about this than i do about meat, produce, diamonds, sweatshops, pretty much anything
i dumped a bf once for doing coke at a party in front of me and to this day i feel good about it
f u dude, knowing what you know
hope you had fun

by nature i am not a tyrant, but this stuff is so violent and pervasive and affects the lives of so many innocent people. it's just super fucked up.

otms

The friends I have who are most likely to use cocaine also seem most likely to be amoral about these kinds of things.

funny how that works

there's no complexity here, like it's not 'should I boycott israeli companies because I think the government is evil?' - I mean you are literally funneling money to mass murderers

Exactly, you are directly paying terrible people to kill other people so that they can bring you the very thing for which you are paying.

this "hand-wringing" may elicit some eye-rolls but w/e

"Hi, I'd like a large pizza with anchovies, pepperoni, mushrooms, and please brutally kill any other pizza deliverymen you see, and their families, along the way"

"Well don't get all MORALISTIC with me!"

i have a lot of sympathy for addicts too, i get it, i just wish people would know how far the tentacles of the product they're buying/selling reach. it always goes further than most people think.

Defend the Indefensible: Cocaine

it's funny because while cocaine itself is dud imo, if it were legal i'd be mostly okay with it. of course i'd still think it was kind of annoying and it would lead to a lot more "casually mentioning your illicit activities" stories than one already hears in one's life, but i wouldn't have many moral objections. and i tend to think the health concerns are a lesser issue than the ones we're discussing here.

i feel bad because i've never done it and would like to try it the once, and thus would carry on the regular joe trade and so now i'm not so sure.

of course -- i don't care about the substance itself the same way i don't care about, say, mcdonald's chicken mcnuggets. i wouldn't eat them, but other people are welcome to. it's just that they're not getting little kids shot and killed, making shitty violent people rich, or ruining local economies (quite as badly).

it's the business, not the product that bothers me.

to rephrase, i hate the game, not the player

i think the scolding "it's all bad for you!" nature of the anti-drug campaigns have not had any effect whatsoever, really. i think anyone who knows people who have done drugs and have not become addicts (which is to say, most people) would have evidence to suggest that the "you take drugs and you will DIE ON THE SPOT" nature of the campaigns were overstated. i'm not sure the moral argument would work, either, because moral concerns don't usually fly well with "people who just like to have a good time" or w/e.

anti-drug campaigns have historically (ie for the past 100 years or so) been so full of the most egregious lies and misinformation that it's a bit "boy who cried wolf" at this point. nobody believes any of the bullshit and they aren't about to start.

by which I mean even if the US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.) no one would bat an eye - the source is totally suspect and not credible

I'm a tiny bit ambivialent about this since I'm not a big fan of cocaine, especially now that I'm in my dotage, but feel that what with my penchant for liquor and weed, I shouldn't be too censorious about other people's favorite mind-altering substances. Liquor is arguably far more destructive globally than coke and that one time, when we tried to ban it here in the US, surprise, we engendered a blood-thirsty milieu that shot each other full of holes with tommy guns and diversified into lots of other illegal ventures and gave birth to whole generation who cast a jaded eye on the law, generally. Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.)

Tbf, they have noted that the illegal drug trade funds violence and terrorism, much like the counterfeit goods trade does.

regime change starts at home so to speak iirc so maybe we could set an example.

legalization is one answer. but its only one part of the puzzle. for profit prison industry - a growth industry that wants to KEEP growing - is another part of it. and law enforcement in some ways depends on drug money to fund themselves! and yeah there is plenty of blood sugar and blood coffee and blood sneakers, etc, etc, out there.

Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

Also, this kind of run-on sentence reminds me exactly of how some people sound on coke.

um, i guess i was trying to say that the drug war is a BIG business. in a capitalist country that thrives on businesses getting bigger. and the profits keep coming in as long as the bloody mess continues. or am i just a raving loon.

the only argument that is often made is yes, yes there are other things in the world which cause pain and suffering. it is quite bad here in l.a. w/r/t drug violence in places as well, such as "legal" (there is a question about how legal they are since they get raided by the feds) weed dispensaries are knocked off by gangs and clerks working there get killed, maybe b/c the gangs view them as competition?

one of the arguments, i should say

i'm not saying anything that anyone doesn't know. it has hurt my heart for many years. so many dead and locked up and gone and so much suffering and basically it just gets worse every decade.

i don't think, btw, that the answer is to say "well there are other bad things in the world, too!" because this is a particularly nasty thing, so violent, so reprehensible, and i would love to see worldwide legalization of every illegal drug. people who want them are going to get them anyway.

Not sure if I exactly followed Michael White's post but I don't think the suffering in the coffee, sugar, tea trades are quite on the level of drug gang violence, not to mention that there is, e.g., fair trade, shade grown coffee available. I mean I'm often heard espousing the same sort of "Shit is complicated, everything is global, everything results in suffering" kind of talk, but I think I can draw a line at a product that directly results in so much killing.

i'm not sure i follow the logic of this conversation.

i am curious whether the de facto legalization of weed in california is going to lead to a drop in arrests for meth, coke, heroin, etc. we'll see after the data shakes out (maybe in 5 or 10 years?) i guess ...

what i'm not sure about is whether people agree that legalizing cocaine will reduce violence or disagree

we don't know for sure but chances are quite likely "yes"

yeah does coffee or nikes end up with 72 ppl graves on the regular?

wiki article isn't v. in depth and i cannot be bothered right now to look further but portugal legalised everything in 2001 and:

A study by Glenn Greenwald (commissioned by the libertarian Cato Institute) found that in the five years after the start of decriminalization, illegal drug use by teenagers had declined, the rate of HIV infections among drug users had dropped, deaths related to heroin and similar drugs had been cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction had doubled, while usage in the EU continued to increase, including in states with "hard-line drug policies."[3]

Since Portugal's policy reform in 2001, the rates of overdoses and HIV cases have been reduced significantly.[9][10][11]

Not sure if I exactly followed Michael White's post but I don't think the suffering in the coffee, sugar, tea trades are quite on the level of drug gang violence, not to mention that there is, e.g., fair trade, shade grown coffee available. I mean I'm often heard espousing the same sort of "Shit is complicated, everything is global, everything results in suffering" kind of talk, but I think I can draw a line at a product that directly results in so much killing.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 11:08 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

to buy "good" products to assuage your bourgeois guilt is not a correct method of addressing an unjust system. the correct way to address an unjust system is to tear it down by force and replace it with a better one. democracy does not work, has not worked, and will not ever work. decmocracy is a farce in the face of true collectivist might.

Doesn't mention drug related violence, gang related etc. but you have to assume that unless they decide to shoot every doctor in Portugal, they automatically lose the war for terrority and thus less deaths would have occured over it.

banaka glitches

OT on the drug thing but re juarez, this http://www.mizzworthy.com/2010/07/mac-for-rodarte-words-fail-me.html caused quite a lot of outrage on beauty blogs a few weeks ago. i wanted to post something abt it at the time so here it is i guess. i read 2666 earlier this year and have been following related things.

ugh

yeh. MAC (eventually) said they were renaming the collection and donating profits to related causes so that's a good outcome.

another thing that i recoiled from was finding that the idea hinted at in the novel abt some of these murders being the product of elite parties where these women are basically used & killed for sport, is an actual theory put forward by an investigative journalist who did early work on the killings.

all off-topic tho pretty much, the topic of the ethics of drug use is a good one.

essentially it is suggested that juarez is such a fucked-up place that those who want to rape and murder can get away with it pretty easily. and considering how the police force is overwhelmed, it almost makes sense (unfortunately) that murders not solved within a couple of days are shelved and forgotten. it's thought to be a combination of serial killer types and evil drug cartel mfers (and really, they're all serial killers, they just have different m.o.'s than "normal" serial killers...)

hee hee hee "democracy never worked"

can we change the title of this thread?

+1

good thread

the mind just totally reels when confronted with this kind of stuff...the stuff in 2666 was intense but I kind of coped with it alright bcz I already kinda knew what to expect and therefore viewed the whole thing in a sort of detachment. Confronted with the actuality of this stuff, though, and I just want to shut down. I am infected with the same complete hopelessness which must be a fact of daily life for those in Ciudad Juarez whenever I open this thread. I just think "This must stop", I can't think anything else, and yet...

re: buying local weed: i hear there is a trend where one of the criminal orgs like the hells go to every cities and villages on the territory to meet every local dealers to impose their org as the sole provider. the dealers can't buy locally produced weed : the hells buy it, send it 2 the urban center where it is redistributed through the territory. it's like the criminal version of the kind of problem the local food movement got vs the global corporate model.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67T06L20100830?

Lady Gaga says using drugs like cocaine helped her find her musical identity.

The pop diva made several candid statements about her history of drug use in a recent interview with Q Magazine reprinted by MTV.com Friday.

"Using drugs, I really figured out the art I wanted to make and was inspired," said Gaga. "Some people find inspiration in dark places. I guess I'm one of them. What always made me different is that if I was doing drugs I was also making music. I wasn't just doing drugs."

Lady Gaga says she now uses cocaine "maybe a couple of times a year".

meanwhile Leal's 4-year-old daughter was slightly wounded in the attack, a spokesman said.

tonights mad men sucked

Does anyone know what the drug war death stats were like before Calderon was president? Because I wonder if the stats directly track the increased drug war by the government.

i think the increase coincided with his sending of the military to try to put an end to the cartel violence.

Charles Bowden has another book called Shadow in the City that would appeal to those of you interested in the law enforcement side of the drug trade. It's about one detective and a huge bust, reads like fiction (as does much of his writing).

another mayor was killed yesterday

since the mexican drug war started up in earnest in Dec '06, 28,000 have been killed. in that same time period, based on what i roughly estimate from a site devoted to keeping track of casualties in iraq, around 35,000 iraqis have been killed (civilians and military.)

can the joek thread title be changed plz

thx

np

now the gaga thing i quoted last night is kind of the attitude north of the border towards the problems south of it in microcosm, meaning people don't seem to care nor do they really even think about it.

not everyone mind you, obviously not.

good thread. 2666 was an incredible book & i definitely recommend it to anyone thinking through this

curious where financial resources towards alleviating this could even be directed

some problems u cant throw money at?

to answer harbl's q, i imagine casual, semi-regular, or recreational cocaine use makes up most of the use in this country, more than the use by addicts?

i imagine its similar to the liquor industry where a small % of habitual users account for a large % of sales. (iirc its something like ~5/40% w/booze)

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this. theres a good bbc documentary on the cartels & shorty guzman/sinaloa in particular that details how in certain parts of the country the cartels essentially are the state. w/o a change in u.s. drug policy you're still funding both sides in a civil war - since criminalization is what makes drugs so profitable to traffic - & the larger/systematic rationale for conflict between the cartels & the state still exists. demand reduction would weaken the cartels but drugs aren't their only source of income & they're deeply entrenched in mexican life.

their are plenty of non-drug related things that directly contribute to the violence as well. the arms industry/the nra have spent how much money derailing any attempts to control the flow of u.s. weapons into mexico? & the maquiladoras would still exist w/o the drug trade, as would human trafficking. u.s. trade & immigration policy is just as complicit in creating the current situation imo

oh btw thread title change sucks

also that charles bowden book is really good

yeah we really should have more shitty joke threads about situations involving widespread mass murder

people will ~never~ stop doing drugs, so it will continue until the governments of the world collectively decide to legalize (lol), which will also never happen in our lifetimes.

ftr I think the only "joke" in either thread title was Tom making fun of vahid and me claiming naming rights for the conversation and neither one of us was actually making light of what is happening in Mexico so try not taking out understandable anger at the situation on ppl who aren't mocking it or contributing to it

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this.

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

suggest banned, danny dyer

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

current u.s. policy does?????

Well, current US policy is not just that people should stop doing drugs, it's that massive quasi-military operations should be undertaken and/or supported against drug cartels. Obviously a failure, but more than just-say-no.

there are some halfhearted efforts at eradication and interdiction, but not much

also that certification bs -- what a load of horseshit that is. do we still certify/decertify countries based on their cooperation with our "war on drugs"?

from a may article:

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/ArtAndPhoto-Fronts/AP_GRAPHICS/AP-DRUG-SPENDING.grid-6x2.gif

headline says it all

U.S. drug war has met none of its goals
After 40 years and $1 trillion, drug use is rampant and violence pervasive

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37134751/

suggest banned, danny dyer

meh

I mean deflect all you want but keeping stupid jokes in the thread title is pretty disrespectful considering the turn the thread has taken.

that gaga quote is revolting
i wonder if she would agree with the guy who works double shifts at the perdue plant who does meth so that he can work double shifts
"i'm not just doing drugs, i'm doing drugs that help my work!"

what a dipshit

there are some halfhearted efforts at eradication and interdiction, but not much

― The Great Jumanji, (La Lechera), Monday, August 30, 2010 2:45 PM Bookmark

Hundreds of millions of dollars a year in military aid to Colombia alone is "not much"? You can call it failed, futile, etc. but we spend a little too much money to call it"half-hearted"

imo: someone should make a meme image transposing gaga quote w/ newspaper headlines on teh violence. harness gaga hate for something more productive

I really didn't think I'd get back to feel "Poker Face" levels of contempt for Lady Gaga but there you go.

Oddly enough I picked up Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo just a couple of days ago...(nothing to do with drug wars it gives the impression of a suffocation of a people/landscape)

we may be throwing money at it, but what we're doing with that money seems pretty halfhearted to me. i have mixed feelings about funding the military in colombia. if we expect the existing structures to know what to do with the money, or to handle it ethically, i would say that's a weak halfhearted attempt.

not that i have any better ideas, mind you, but i would hardly call what we're doing to eradicate/interdict the actual drug shipments a fully invested holistic approach at this problem that is deeply embedded in the global economy.

this is a problem that folks that lady gaga can easily ignore b/c it happens to a class of people who are not on their radar

I don't think there's really such a thing as an adequate plan to eradicate cocaine worldwide. It's just too easy to grow, transport, hide, move, etc. The best thing you can do is de-criminalize to lower the price and minimize the incentive for violence.

cocaine is not easy to grow because it does not grow; coca is easy to grow, but the processing coca --> cocaine is actually pretty complicated iirc

it's way cheaper than it was 20-25 years ago and it's, not surprisingly, all over the place
the violence persists as well

i suppose you can't stop everyone from doing cocaine but perhaps people can have the decency not to brag about it as if it's a badge of honor or a rite of passage, considering the high human cost of the trade.

people? have decency? sadly, this is unlikely.

I really hope I don't derail this thread, but I have a couple of questions:

1) are the Ciudad Juarez murders--which, in my understanding, remain unsolve--counted in the "28000-since-2006" statistics? I thought that those had been happening since the mid-90s and seem to be an important facet of this issue while at the same time being its own phenomenon...?

2) from what I've heard Southern Texas is also being terrorized by gang- and drug-violence, particularly from the MS 13 gang...there has to be some kind of connection between what's going on down there and what's happening in Mexico, right?

i think they do count but they are there own phenomenon. i tend to think the take in 2666 is probably pretty grimly accurate. from everything i have read, it's not like in the u.s. where being snatched off the streets--even in a major city--is so unlikely that you'll likely never meet someone who ends up with that fate. there i think it's a matter of how many women you know have been killed or something. i feel like that was a quote i heard somewhere at some point. when you consider that in a city of 1.5 million, some residents suggest thousands of women have been killed in recent years, that's just its own issue. but i imagine there is considerable overlap with cartel violence. any group who is willing to toss grenades into crowds or kill rehab patients to make a point is quite likely to give in to their worst impulses in other areas, especially in a city where the police are increasingly powerless.

everybody here is strictly-and-only fair trade chocolate right? no "I couldn't resist a snickers" and shit? because child slavery is as bad as anything the cocaine cartels are up to imo

Right. I wasn't trying to say that the situation in Texas was nearly as bad, just that it was bad, and that badness was due to what I figured was cartel violence...but really I know next to nothing about the drug and gang situation in southern Texas...as far as Ciudad Juarez, I was under the strong impression that the cartels were probably esponsible for that as well, but again, that's been going on since I think the mid-90s, so that would kind of clash against statistics that have anything to do with Calderon's rise to power & his subsequent military initiatives...

i don't know if there's been a dramatic increase in the murder of women in juarez during that period or anything, but maybe the open war street violence has been the cause of the rise in the homicide rate and the other murders have remained the same as they ever were?

everybody here is strictly-and-only fair trade chocolate right? no "I couldn't resist a snickers" and shit? because child slavery is as bad as anything the cocaine cartels are up to imo

I generally avoid chocolate because I like other sweets more; I try to be "fair trade" about everything I buy but I don't control all of the shopping.

i don't really eat much chocolate but i usually end up with fair trade chocolate, i don't even have to double check. same goes for coffee as well. i had a milky way bar a few years ago, i guess.

actually haerosmith I think if anything is counterproductive it's the idea that buying "Good" products will keep your hands clean; that's why I am kind of nonplussed about the Gaga-baiting around her...I don't have a problem about coke-bragging turning La Lechera's or omar's stomach, but at the same time, "buying local weed" seems like negative altruism at best; it keeps one's conscience clean, but does fuck all for anyone else. I doubt it truly troubles in the afterlife any of those 72 migrant workers whether or not either Lady Gaga or an unemployed gas station attendant from Homer, Michigan directly contributed to the wealth of the druglords who ordered their deaths.

That being said I might stop eating chocolate. I don't really eat it too much anyways.

all we can do in our lives is try our best not to do things that directly fuck up the lives of people, even if they're people we don't see, interact with, or are thousands of miles away. i'm sure we all do that somehow, the connections between nations and corporations are too complex for that not to occur all over the place. but the least we can do is call it where we blatantly see it happening and stop contributing to it.

^^^ exactly

They don't use kids to make Cheetos, do they?

nah, pretty sure it's like heavily-processed corn and some chemicals

Oh shit, they do contain pork enzymes though. Fuck.

all we can do in our lives is try our best not to do things that directly fuck up the lives of people, even if they're people we don't see, interact with, or are thousands of miles away. i'm sure we all do that somehow, the connections between nations and corporations are too complex for that not to occur all over the place. but the least we can do is call it where we blatantly see it happening and stop contributing to it.

― ('_') (omar little), Tuesday, August 31, 2010 11:38 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but see if we're going to concern ourselves with this kind of thing then I think there comes a point where not doing cocaine can only be seen as a good first step.

yes

unfortunately all my ideas involve the U.S. annexing northern Mexico, which:

1) is the worst idea ever.
2) is less likely than gettin eveyone in the world to either stop using cocaine or to legalize it.
3) begs the question whether or not the US are really that much more well-equipped to deal with something like this. (again, southern Texas, though one also only needs to look at Iraq)
4) is an impossibly imperialistic way of approaching the problem.
5) does nothing at all for the rest of the atrocities committed worldwide due to the systematic corruption of capitalism and our country's unreasonable demand for creature comforts.
6) ignores the fact that our country has enough problems of its own.

so yeah sorry I got nothing so far.

it's all baby steps which may lead nowhere, especially since a major decrease in drug violence in mexico and colombia might be reliant upon decriminalization of drugs by not just the u.s. but many other countries.

i wonder what percentage of cartel money is made from north and south america? i imagine that while it's not incredibly easy to get drugs across the border, it's probably a lot more difficult to get drugs overseas.

i imagine that while it's not incredibly easy to get drugs across the border, it's probably a lot more difficult to get drugs overseas.

plenty of european/mediterranean/asian syndicates working with the cartels

in a spirit of brotherly cooperation

yeah true

whether it's in the very large historical trends toward capitalization, toward gov't bureaucratization, or toward greater justice, i think in 50 or 100 years it will seem nuts that this huge multinational industry was conducted entirely illegally.

or not, i dunno. it could be the ideology supporting 'the drug war' will hollow out and seem more and more ridiculous to more and more people, but it'll continue on anyway, since no political actor wants to take the risk of tipping it over.

I see this as exactly the kind of thing that politicians would use to prop The Drug War up...

I'm actually for decriminalization, though I'm uncertain as to its impact.

i'm all for it esp. since anyone who wants drugs can get them at any time and the impact of law enforcement is pretty negligible despite the pictures of DEA agents smiling in front of bags of cocaine. i figure they just keep pushing more and more across the border, assuming some of it will get caught, and not particularly caring if it does since they just keep making it and keep pushing it over.

Been reading more about legalisation in Portugal and it's pretty startling and seems like the only rational option-

On 1 July 2001, Portugal decriminalised the possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. You can have and use as much as you like for your own needs, and if you are caught, the police might refer you to a rehab programme, but you will never get a criminal record. (Supplying and selling remains illegal.) The prohibitionists predicted a catastrophic rise in addiction, and even I – an instinctive legaliser – was nervous.

Now we know: overall drug use actually fell a little. As a major study by Glenn Greenwald for The Cato Institute found, among Portuguese teenagers the fall was fastest: 13-year-olds are four per cent less likely to use drugs, and 16-year-olds are six per cent less likely. As the iron law of prohibition predicts, the use of hard drugs has fallen fastest: heroin use has crashed by nearly 50 per cent among the young who were not yet addicted. The Portuguese have switched the billions that used to be spent chasing and jailing addicts to providing them with prescriptions and rehab. The number of people in drug treatment is now up by 147 per cent. Almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back. Indeed, many citizens want to take the next step: legalise supply too, and break the back of the gangs.

Portugal is no fluke. It turns out that wherever the drug laws are relaxed, drug use stays the same, or – where spending is switched to treatment – declines. Between 1972 and 1978, 11 US states decriminalised marijuana possession. The National Research Council found that the number of dope-smokers stayed the same. In Switzerland, a decade ago the government started providing legal centres where people could safely inject heroin – for free. Burglary rates fell by 60 per cent, and street homelessness ended. A study by The Lancet – one of the most respected medical journals in the world – found that the rate of people becoming new heroin addicts fell by 82 per cent. Why? Heroin addicts didn't need to recruit new addicts to sell to in order to feed their habit. The pyramid scheme of heroin addiction was broken.

So the drug war doesn't achieve its goal of reducing addiction. All it does achieve is horrific gang violence – and in some cases the cartels gut whole countries like Mexico and Afghanistan. It does unwittingly press people into using harder and more dangerous drugs. And it does waste tens of billions of dollars that could really reduce drug addiction, by spending it on treatment for addicts.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-accept-the-facts-ndash-and-end-this-futile-war-on-drugs-1818167.html

for the record:
i don't eat much chocolate, but when i do it's fancy fair trade chocolate (but i will eat someone else's choco chip cookies if it means being polite or not) no snickers, thanks. i drink fair trade coffee every goddamn day. it's true that occasionally i stop at dunkin donuts for a cup of blood diamonds, but it's rare.

I don't always eat chocolate, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.

I just don't get the US at all - it's like, a country with whom you share hundreds of miles of border with is being completely destabilized by your policies and your response is to...do nothing? stick your head in the sand? idgi.

it's not just the US...and it's not just Mexico either...

yeah that's the big problem there. every move is just baby steps in the right direction rather than a solve-all-problems move.

yeah I know. it's just that it's like, you live in a pretty nice house, you have a nice life. the house next door is a crackhouse. what are you gonna do, build a higher fence?

sell yr kids crack so they don't have to fund the ppl nextdoor?

truth, plant coca leaf and marijuana plants in your own backyard.

Looking for the US to make some pre-emptive military strikes in Mexican territory in 2013 or 2017, depending. A "national security imperative," yknow.

http://ezpicshare.com/images/1215ba-1283388187.jpg
http://ezpicshare.com/images/2148xl.jpg

one wonders what the cartels, being so used to power and wealth and the freedom to basically kill and rape at will, would do if there was some mass worldwide legalization movement. i would imagine they would attempt to maintain those in other ways? even if they did, i cannot imagine they would have anywhere near the level of influence or violence.

they would resort to selling pirated DVDs

that would take a while to happen xp

the cartels would rush for windfall profits and probably compete even more violently for whatever markets would remain after legalisation (kidnapping/protection etc, perhaps counterfeit pharmaceuticals)

yeah this si precisely one of the reasons why I'm kind of dubious on the whole 'buy local weed' solution. I imagine druglords get nicer with less money in their pockets...

Consumerism is a weird, weird ontology.

'imagne' = 'doubt'

u sound like yr justifyin tbh

iirc the point of not funding these dudes isnt to make them 'nicer'

If the money dries up the crime and violence goes away.

Didn't see it linked earlier, but this New Yorker article from May seems to be a decent primer.

As far as why shoot up a rehab clinic, there's the sense (as Lechera said) that the gangs keep the streets clean and run the rehab centers in their region, so the centers can be turf and a symbol of pride and progress.

nothing to justify. i don't really care about whether or not people do coke; my focus is purely on the lives being lost in Mexico. Cartels getting meaner and increase in violence might be a regrettable side-effect for those who go with 'fair-trade' drugs, but it seems to me it would just a worsening of the problen (though admittedly its very possibly a problem that would necessarily worsen before it got better anyways)...

I guess I kind of feel that our responsibility in the matter extends beyond the kind of drugs we choose to use...

(and for the record I haven't done anything remotely cocaine-related since 2003)

remotely cocaine-related = cocaine, crack, laced joints, etc.

i know someone who always rhapsodizes about fair trade coffee but still does the occasional line of cocaine, which i think is kind of "funny."

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

out of sight, out of mind seems to be the mantra of the day

:(

A couple of questions I've been thinking about, dunno if they are worth asking but here goes-

1. I can understand that Portugal's problem was mostly heroin abuse and legal use is done in a doctors office, supervised, and not able to take any away or enough to od. But unlike heroin, cocaine is a party drug - if it was legalised, how would it be sold? No-one would care for a similar way to what i've read about this legal heroin use. Would you be able to go to a pharmacy to buy yr dose?

Ok just noticed the time and so its less a couple of questions more like one and run.

Considering how differently different states treat alcohol sales, I would imagine it would be done differently depending on where one lives. We still have dry counties in the US! I grew up in Ohio thinking that every state had drive-thru liquor stores. Whoops.

i wonder if there is an underground alcohol trade in those counties? it seems kind of pointless either way, you could drive one county over for your fix.

i think that's what most people do but who knows -- maybe there are still moonshiners?

or they drive to ohio and use a handy-dandy drive thru liquor store and then drive home

a guy i know made moonshine and shot cans in the woods with a handgun (that was what he did all the time.) i think he was being ironic but eventually ended up all too sincere.

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

― Hubert Lolz (lpz), Thursday, 2 September 2010 17:30 (4 hours ago) Permalink

do you

I was in a speakeasy in Kentucky a couple weeks ago.

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

― Hubert Lolz (lpz), Thursday, 2 September 2010 17:30 (4 hours ago) Permalink

do you

― the embrace of waka flocka is v pertinent (deej), Thursday, September 2, 2010 9:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Yeah.

not to blow ur mind or anything but i know some ppl who go on abt the evils of religion but still bump a love supreme

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Saint_John_Will-I-Am_Coltrane.jpg/535px-Saint_John_Will-I-Am_Coltrane.jpg

fuck will.i.am

I was genuinely shocked when I read a recent news article saying that the current war on drogs in Mexico has led to some 30,000 deaths.

It's pretty fucking crazy. Murdering mayors, chiefs of police, army generals...

It's like a war, on drugs!

lol

itsafuckingdisgrace.gif

i know some ppl who go on about teh evils of drugs & watch the wire -- crazy!!

its almost as if ... being aware of the underground drug trade makes u MORE aware of the huge cost

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129752424

4 min npr story about arrest of "la barbie" (edgar valdez villareal of the beltran leyva cartel) -- apparently he made a videotaped statement during which he "squirmed" and called the zetas "filth"

Valdez says there was a meeting in Cuernavaca in 2007 where the top leadership of some the country’s most powerful traffickers agreed to a nonaggression pact. But Valdez says Guzman broke the deal in 2008 when he tried to take over the Juarez cartel’s base across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Valdez’s lawyer in Houston says all of the videotaped declarations by Valdez are from a script that Mexican federal police stuck in front of his client.

Has anyone else started reading the Bowden book yet? I've been reading it since Friday. I would put a choice quote in here, but there are too many. Highly recommended, but extremely and deeply depressing.

Oh, and I just heard the mayor of Juarez on the radio saying that they're not having a big group gathering for Mexico's 200th birthday celebration, but they are having fireworks shot from 6 different places in the city so that people won't have to leave their homes to see them.

The story also said that 6,000 people have been killed in Juarez alone in the last 3 years.

:(

If you can read Spanish, this is a really beautiful statement from the founder of the (first and only) juarez women's shelter
http://www.casa-amiga.org.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=94&Itemid=114

She died in 2009 and I was disappointed to find that she has no wikipedia entry. Googling for her yielded the casa amiga website and a bunch of really disturbing beheading photos.

btw happy mexican independence day, everyone

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/17/mexico.journalist.killed/index.html?hpt=T2

journalists killed. possibility discussed: the gunman did not actually intend to kill them -- "sorry dudes we actually intended to kill a human-rights activist!"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101020/wl_yblog_upshot/college-student-named-police-chief-in-violence-plagued-mexican-town-after-no-one-else-would-apply

^^^ that is so goddamn sad. came here to post that.

not to mention: the epic insanity regarding that jet skiing couple along the border who got shot up

i really hope this police chief manages to survive her term

theres a long article in this week's newyoker about the army office who became police chief in tijuana. it was depressing because it a) made clear that any 'gains' against the cartels are coming at horrific cost in lives and civil liberties and b) how much money the u.s. govt is spending on helping the mexican army to torture its own citizens in the war on drugs

murder city was easily one of the most depressing books i have ever read, and i have read A LOT of depressing books about latin america and depressing books about crime.

I don't think I can even keep up with the news on this anymore, it's just so fucking depressing.

murder city is incredible & like 2666 really manages to provide some small sense of the mundanity of the horror, of how commonplace and numbing it is through sheer aggregation

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/27/2010-10-27_entire_police_force_in_los_ramones_mexico_quits_after_gunmen_attack_headquarters.html

El Blog del Narco

que horror

Did you guys/gals read this?

(it's the article Lamp mentioned above)

Normally, in Mexico, narco-traffickers don’t tolerate aggressive law enforcement—least of all from city police, who lack the formal power to investigate serious crimes (state police do that), let alone combat drug trafficking (that’s for the federal police). Local police chiefs who annoy them are simply killed. It happened to the Tijuana police chief in 2000. It happened to the chief in Tecate, the next border town to the east, in 2007—he was murdered in bed, while lying next to his wife, with fifty shots to the face and chest. It happened to the deputy police chief in Tijuana in January, 2008, when a large contingent of gunmen surrounded his house and killed him and his wife and two daughters.

dang

15 people shot dead at a car wash

jesus

'Saint of Death' religion probed

Chandler detectives are investigating whether Mexican drug-cartel members who pray to the "Saint of Death" are responsible for the stabbing and decapitation of a man earlier this month.

"Certainly they are looking at the role that Santa Muerte (Saint of Death) played in this as that is a religion that drug cartels follow because they believe it will protect them from law enforcement," Chandler Detective David Ramer said Tuesday.

The three suspects and victim had been visiting from Mexico, according to police reports.

Candles and an Ouija (spirit) board were found in the central-city apartment. Beheadings have been known to be used as part of the Santa Muerta religion, police said.

Additionally, neighbors reported the four visitors and a neighbor of the apartment in the 300 block of West Fairview Street spoke drunkenly of the religion as they talked until the early hours of Oct. 10.

"While inside (the five men) were all talking drunk about Santa Muerte, which means the Saint of Death in Spanish, and were acting so strangely that (a resident) felt uncomfortable enough to leave the apartment a few minutes later," a police report reads.

The report released Tuesday describes the last minutes of a man who was stabbed, decapitated and left in a pool of blood. It also provides details about the four men who had been drinking with him, as well as claims by neighbors that the men practiced Santa Muerte.

The murder victim has been identified as Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy, 38.

Police have arrested one suspect, a neighbor who was renting a bed for $100 a month in the apartment across the way. They are searching for three suspects they alternately describe as being from Mexico and California in a case they say is drug related.

"Was this guy killed as part of the religion? They are looking that this might be drug-cartel related, and we know that drug cartels practice this religion," Ramer said of Santa Muerte.

story continues at link

that New Yorker article is wild...it's as if the false dichotomoy that Bush & friends presented to us (torture & suspended habeas corpus for public safety) became a frightening reality

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/03/mexico.us.students.killed/index.html

(CNN) -- Two students from the University of Texas at El Paso were shot and killed Tuesday night in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Chihuahua state investigators said late Wednesday.

The students, identified as Manuel Acosta Villalobos, 25, and Eder Diaz Sotero, 23, were gunned down in a hail of more than 30 bullets while driving a Nissan Sentra with Texas plates, Chihuahua State police spokesman Arturo Sandoval said.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/05/photographers.journey.below.border/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11703663

how long can this war burn this hot?

I don't know why I keep on clicking this thread

my students were talking about santa muerte in class the other day. as for your question about how long?
as long as it's permitted to last imo. it's a billion dollar business.

RIP Don Alejo Garza Temez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGsQJt94qVc

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/11/mexican-marines-reconstruct-death-of.html#comment-form

How do you translate 'Santa Muerte' as Saint of Death? Shouldn't it be 'Saint Death' or 'Holy Death'?

iirc it would be like saying 'death saint' and thus 'saint of death' would be a more english-appropriate translation...pero my spanish is pretty weak

i'm in the middle of reading The Daughters of Juarez, which focuses on the "femicides" of Juarez over the past couple of decades. the book seems to suggest that the murders could be partially the work of both the police and drug cartels, but overall it's all part of a general culture of juarez that has crept up in which people are unafraid of law enforcement b/c of the heavy crime rate and the corruption of the justice system. i was also surprised to see how much of what has actually transpired there was taken rather directly by roberto bolano for 2666, which isn't a criticism but just an observation. there's one particularly chilling bit where a girl has disappeared and they discover her body in an open field along with 7 other bodies in various stages of decomposition.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20101203/capt.8b15c906419c4e7bb3fefc5851df5c4f-8b15c906419c4e7bb3fefc5851df5c4f-0.jpg

CUERNAVACA, Mexico – The Mexican army has detained a 14-year-old U.S. citizen suspected of acting as a killer for a drug cartel. The boy said he had been working for the cartel since he was 11.

The much-rumored alleged young assassin nicknamed "El Ponchis" was captured late Thursday at the airport near Cuernavaca with his 16-year-old sister as they tried to catch a flight to Tijuana and flee the country, said an army official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

The sister told reporters that they planned to cross the border to San Diego, California, to go to their stepmother's house. She said their mother had sent money for the tickets, but she did not specify where the mother lives.

Morelos state Gov. Marco Adame Castillo said at a news conference that the boy was born in San Diego and that Mexican officials are researching whether he is a citizen of Mexico as well. Although state courts usually handle crimes by juveniles in Mexico, state authorities have asked the federal government to take over the case because of the gravity of the crimes.

The teen told reporters early Friday he has worked for a drug cartel since he was 11 and that he participated in at least four decapitations. The source said his sister was accused of getting rid of the bodies by dumping them on streets and freeways.

"I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me," said the boy, who appeared calm and showed no remorse.

Another teenage sister accompanied the two, but officials said she was not suspected of being involved in the cartels.

"El Ponchis" wore blue jeans and a T-shirt and the detained sister jeans and a sweater when they were apprehended. Their airline tickets were already purchased.

The army did not specify where they were detained in the airport or whether they had already passed through security checks.

The attorney general for Morelos state said the two would turned over to state authorities, who handle crimes committed by minors in Mexico.

The two were suspected of helping the South Pacific Cartel headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, brother of Arturo Beltran Leyva, a top drug lord who was killed by Mexican marines in Cuernavaca a year ago.

The boy said Friday he had been employed by the cartel since he was ll years old.

Rumors that have circulated for weeks of a killer named "El Ponchis" as young as 12 years old.

Hector Beltran Leyva's fight for control of the cartel has caused a major spike in violence in the state just south of Mexico City, and in neighboring Guerrero state, where the resort of Acapulco is located.

The siblings were living in a poor neighborhood of Jiutepec, a working-class suburb of Cuernavaca, known as a weekend getaway for Mexico City residents. The area has an industrial area with Nissan, Unilever and other factories, rustic single-level concrete homes and some farms.

Neighbors said the mother has worked in the San Diego area for some time, but none had information about the teenagers' father.

last remaining police officer in border town guadalupe kidnapped
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12085405

friend of mine is in mexico city taking photographs on the crime beat

http://milkyblacks.blogspot.com/2011/01/notes-from-crime-beat.html

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/02/chicas-kalashnikov.html

I couldn't even read all the way through that. It was just too much.

“Not really. I am saving money for my kids. I want them to study, to be something in life. They are still little and they don’t know what I do. At least if one day they find out, if I don’t spend the money, they might forgive me.

jesus

la guera's bravado seems really really ott to me -- not ott in that she is not doing and saying those things -- she clearly is -- but in that she doesn't believe it

living in that sort of environment seems just like having permanent incurable ptsd

: (

a few days ago the brother, sister, and sister-in-law of a murdered activist were also all murdered. presumably one of those "we'll kill you and then kill your family later on if they dare discuss it" sort of things.

How much longer can this shit go on with no one stopping it? Its just so insane.

this particular phase has been going on hardcore for at least 3 years
i do wonder when it will become a priority

i was in mexico last week

Did you get murdered?

He's posting from más allá.

the thing is that when countries declare war on druglords shit generally tends to get worse & stay worse for a long time

He's posting from más allá.
the solitary lol on this thread :(

Well, it's a mexican thing to mock the dead, y'know?

I live in Mexico(Monterrey) by the way.

http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/war2004/posada8.gif

true
are you mexican are just living there?

oops add OR

Mexican.

I couldn't finish that article either but i might go back and read it piecemeal later on.

Holy hell...

My wife is from Mexico and has lived there for 24 years so she is very familiar with the situation and watches the Mexican news every day for updates; I agree with everyone in here on how ridiculous this all is. The sad thing is that cities that were once "safe" are now starting to get these waves of crime. Her family is (or was) being followed and threatened; thankfully nothing has happened, but the reality is that this stuff is becoming commonplace and it sucks. Last time I went there, there were armored tanks on the streets with enough ammo to waste an entire city block (really!!), and her graduation party was cut short when it was announced that the gangs were coming to kidnap and kill 100 people there. Basically, the nightlife is kind of dead at the moment.

She generally tends to think that the situation will get better (as Cuba was pretty much the same way 10 years ago but seems okay now) after their president leaves office (or gets murdered, not sure which is more likely), as apparently the guy is fighting the drug lords which is leading to all this violence. Alternatively, she is acutally kind of hoping for a U.S. takeover of Mexico. According to her, Mexico could be a first-world country, as they have great work ethic and many natural resources, but everything is so corrupt and the previaling attitude so defeatist that it's hard to imagine it ever happening.

Read some of the stories coming out of Juarez lately; you literally cannot give away real estate there. If that place ever turns around someone's gonna be rich.

Wishing I hadn't clicked on the other story about the 4 decapitated men now. :(

Remember when Chiapas were the big threat?

i really hope this police chief manages to survive her term

― rothko's chapel and waffles (omar little), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:07 PM Bookmark

She did, kinda.

Chiapas is a state -- I think you mean Zapatistas?

I don't doubt that eventually things will get better, but I wonder when the US is going to (officially, formally) own up to its responsibility here. Drug war fatigue can't last forever, and there's going to be a tipping point. I just wonder when that's going to be.

im living in toluca (a hour and a half south of mexico city) until july. its relatively safe down here although the mood is kinda paranoid. lots of gated communities and so on. talking to mexicans about the whole deal, they seem to be hopeful that the next govt. can come in and clean it all up.

i really hope this police chief manages to survive her term

― rothko's chapel and waffles (omar little), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:07 PM Bookmark

She did, kinda.

― Pleasant Plains

that's a "relief" i suppose.

I feel a little better now for perving over her in the ws threads, then. best wishes to all folks on this thread who are in mexico.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20110316/capt.cb26f3752e6c43c382e7249d1d95b7f6-8ba85f82d3864320af3735bc59ba1e60-0.jpg?x=400&y=263&q=85&sig=_Qc2hVtGbdG4gycY.GEHaw--

Bodies lie on the floor in a home where gunmen killed an elderly woman and two of her grandchildren in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, Mexico, Tuesday March 15, 2011. A convoy of gunmen chased a man into the home and sprayed the residence with bullets killing the 60-year-old woman, along with two boys, ages 2 and 6, police said in a statement. A 23-year-old woman was also wounded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico

interesting

http://www.gamingunion.net/news/call-of-juarez-the-cartel-eyes-on-preview--4343.html

http://www.gamebandits.com/blog/2011/03/18/call-of-juarez-from-tex-mex-western-to-narcoterrorism/

However, when they announced that it would be called Call of Juarez: The Cartel, and would take place in a modern day setting, many people were left rather stunned.

as you can imagine!

It sounded rather cool, but many people wondered if the entire premise of the game, what made it stand out in the first place, would be lost as a result.

oh, for those reasons, then...

I can't stop following that Borderland Beat blog. So depressing and terrifying, but oddly compelling to read about. It really is like a modern day, lawless wild west or something - just ten times more deadly.

I mean, jesus:

hrough this communique, we are announcing that beginning this Friday on March 25, the true cleansing will begin. Beginning in San Nicolas, we will exterminate the scum filled rats: Civil servants, police, and transit authorities. Say goodbye to your families, avoid being with them or using your children as human shields, do not risk it. Ultimately, the scum will meet their end regardless of where they are or who they are with. This will also happen to the neighborhood lookouts, "Neighborhood Watch." We have something very special for you, similar to what the transit authorties will experience.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/26/us-usa-guns-mexico-idUSTRE76P33T20110726

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/in-mexico-the-glamor-of-narco-culture/

#12 is just fucking unbelievable

Narco-culture, he said, is narcocorridos — rap songs about drugs that glorify the life experiences of violent drug dealers. It is giant mausoleums celebrating assassinated kingpins. It is films about the drug world. Blogs about the drug world.

maybe the author is using a very flexible definition of 'rap', but the term generally isn't used w/r/t rap songs

interesting article from foreign policy: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/14/can_mexico_fix_its_image_problem

partly interesting only because i feel like i have seen a # of 'positive' articles abt mexico in e.g. 'the economist' about how things arent as bad in mexico as they seem &c &c

mexican economy has been one of the real successes of the last decade

story a while ago in the times abt how fewer mexicans are coming to the states in favor of new jobs at home

I was just going to post my anecdotal (but very real) evidence of this very thing -- I work in ESL in a major US city and it has been noted (by experienced professionals) in two different schools (pretty major educational hubs within the city) that enrollment in lower level (basic literacy and level 1) ESL classes is not only down, but notably down within the Hispanic population. Lots of Iraqi Christians, east/north Africans, but noticeable downtick in Latinos.

On the other hand, major uptick in generation 1.5 students who are the first in their families to go to college.

mexican economy has been one of the real successes of the last decade

yeah theyve had strong growth even during the last couple of years (like 5+% this year) but the stuff ive read makes it p clear how structurally fucked up and unequal their economy is

oh for sure

I'm pretty sure its been mentioned in this very thread before, but the Borderland Beat blog is one place where you can really grasp how horrific this can be, some really harrowing tales and graphic images from time to time.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/09/14/mexico.violence/index.html

A woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. Attackers left her topless, dangling by her feet and hands from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. A bloodied man next to her was hanging by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply the bone was visible.

Signs left near the bodies declared the pair, both apparently in their early 20s, were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activities on a social network.

omg

:(

ffs

^

!!!!!

Saw this news. So depressed. Shit like this has undone every high I ever had.

terrifying

the photo is blurred but still just sickening

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/09/15/article-2037772-0DE8B1E500000578-413_468x362.jpg

jesus

my fucking god

http://www.examiner.com/drug-cartel-in-national/cartels-now-extorting-teachers-killing-schoolchildren-mexico

At one time, dead children were usually the unintended victims of armed attacks on the streets of Mexico. However, in recent months, the cartels have been specifically targeting children with alarming frequency in order to send a message of their growing dominance in a country consumed by wholesale violence.

The Child Rights Network (CRN) estimates that 994 people under the age of 18 were murdered in drug-related violence between 2006 and 2010 in Mexico.

Juan Martin Perez, director of CRN in Mexico recently told The Washington Post: “Decapitations and hanging bodies from bridges send a message. Killing children is an extension of this trend.”

also really brutal:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003743/Mexican-drug-cartels-force-kidnap-victims-fight-death-gladiator-style-contests.html

What a nightmare.

jesus

the extreme escalation of violence over what... 10 years? just unbelievable.

I know, wikipedia, but...

The 2011 Tamaulipas massacre was the mass murder of at least 193 people[1] discovered in mass graves on April 6, 2011.[2] These people were kidnapped from passenger buses. Although not confirmed, some newspapers mention that the body count surpassed 500, but that the state government of Tamaulipas supposedly censored and prevented such publications.[3][4] This is the second mass murder of its kind in the state of Tamaulipas since the massacre of the 72 illegal immigrants by the Mexican Los Zetas gang on August 24, 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tamaulipas_massacre

This is so heart-breaking and mind-breaking. It feels like there's no end to it.

cocaine is so awesome!

that the zetas are ex special forces dudes gone bad is like some action movie plot come awfully, horrifyingly to life

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/us-prosecutors-fear-jailbreak-plot-by.html

I used to work right around the corner from this high rise jail and would always see people waiting in line on visitation day. It's the weirdest looking building, and apparently it does not have adequate exercise facilities.

The warden on her decision to give this guy special housing:

Specifically, my decision to house Mr. Zambada in SHU [the Special Houstin Unit at MCC] is based on the broad publicity his case has received, his access to unlimited outside resources, law enforcement’s portrayal of this case as the largest international drug conspiracy case in Chicago’s history, and the perception he is currently a cooperating witness, which places not only his life in great danger, but also that of staff who are directly supervising him.

That article makes me picture like some crazy action movie style breakout with helicopters and stuff.

if anyones up for that its the mexican drug cartels

It sure seems dramatic. The warden's declaration is pretty interesting on its own as an official document that I wouldn't normally have access to -- in case you ever wondered what it's like to be a narco kingpin's son in prison in the US.

...in a triangular high rise prison with no yard in the heart of downtown Chicago

Important disctinction imho.

distinction even

That article makes me picture like some crazy action movie style breakout with helicopters and stuff.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Symbol_helicopter.svg/50px-Symbol_helicopter.svg.pnghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Symbol_helicopter_red.svg/50px-Symbol_helicopter_red.svg.png

wikipedia is the greatest site on the web

otm awesome article

But, tbh, theres a part of me that thinks it would be kinda of awesome to watch one of those unfold over downtown Chicago.

Also, this is a prison on top of a skyscraper.

http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-09-20/metro-inmate-highlights-chicagos-connection-mexican-drug-cartels-92217

discussion of chicago's role in mexican drug trade, p essential listening imo

sorry for dbl post from facebook

http://gawker.com/5842370/masked-gunmen-dump-35-bodies-on-busy-street

god my sister told me about that this morning. fucking nuts

a newspaper employee decapitated for a web posting:

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/woman-decapitated-in-mexico-for-web.html

i realize that for some there is little choice since they're terribly addicted, but one would think this sort of thing would indeed put people off the casual, recreational use of drugs coming from this region. i realize this is the more "conservative" argument and drugs in an ideal world would be legal so people who do things like this could run out of money and starve to death, but in the meantime, i dunno man.

this is one where you might not want to look at the pictures. file it under the usual heading of "the drug cartels as terrorists."

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/execution-of-two-chapos.html

good lord

How does it end? The U.S. will neither legalize nor stop buying drugs. How else will the violence stop?

Only way I can see it is if starts really spilling over the border, not just isolated jetski incidents.

When the government starts to leave drug dealers alone to conduct their bajillion dollar business in peace and quiet instead of pretending to wage a "war" on them? I wish I knew the answer to "how does the violence stop".

I also think there has been considerable spillage beyond isolated jetski accidents, but it's not always stuff you can see, not splashy like beheadings or w/e.

Also, don't forget about the profitable prison system.

i realize that for some there is little choice since they're terribly addicted, but one would think this sort of thing would indeed put people off the casual, recreational use of drugs coming from this region. i realize this is the more "conservative" argument and drugs in an ideal world would be legal so people who do things like this could run out of money and starve to death, but in the meantime, i dunno man.

if everyone who paid attention to this kinda news + considered themselves a 'kinda ethical consumer' stopped doing coke, would that be enough to change the market dynamic in any meaningful way? I'm gonna say probably not but I don't know how you'd even attempt to measure something like that.

this is like recycling your bottles or making sure you don't waste electricity or whatever - all things I endorse but I don't pretend like they're really 'making a difference'...real change can only come via national policy. but I mean, if you are someone who bothers to recycle your bottles, turn off the lights etc. and you still do drugs w/o really considering where they come from...well, that seems like a weird way to go through life.

I realize that in the grand history of absolutely sick, despicable awful inhumane evil things humans have done to each other, beheading someone with a chainsaw is maybe only halfway up the list, but goddamn I didn't need to see pictures. jesus.

Anonymous said...
I've seen a lot of things on various blogs, but this may be the worst. The individuals working for the cartels are heartless serial killers. These individuals need to be hunted down and executed on site! Forget giving a trial to people like this, as it would be a waste of time to allow them to breathe another moment on earth. You wouldn't slaughter an animal in this fashion, let alone a human being.

...

Again, I recommend Charles Bowden's Murder City. I didn't click on the pictures. Honestly, splashy violence/news makes the conflict feel more dramatic/vital/urgent, but it doesn't really do much beyond that. Certainly doesn't solve any problems to look at hacked up people.

Yeah, I know about shootings on the U.S. side, just nothing that comes close to the degree of violence in Mexico.

U.S. troops would have to find a "reason" to go in like Panama 1989 or something. Seems weird that there's this huge uncorrupted force amassed on the border doing nothing because the chainsaw executions are happening outside of their jurisdiction.

it seems to me that what we can do personally is choose not to be part of any kind of larger problem, cf what you mentioned iatee. like it's pretty easy for me to not do drugs and remove myself from that clusterfuck and i'm sure there are plenty of other people who have chosen to do the same for similar reasons. it's not enough to actively change things for the better, but i don't even want to bear the most infinitesimal amount of responsibility for that mess. kinda the same reason i stick to fair trade goods as much as possible and ditch things when i find out they're coming from sketchy sources.

i also recommend(ed?) "the daughters of jaurez" by teresa rodriguez, which grimly ties in with the drug war even though the overwhelming number of murders committed against women in juarez during the period depicted may not have to do entirely with drug cartels. it gives a sense of the environment in which those murders were allowed to occur with seemingly little law enforcement intervention and how such violence can be happening today.

The worst part is that you have no idea -- most citizens can't have any idea -- where the tentacles of this vast criminal organization go because it is an underwater monster. It's easy to say that you don't want to have anything to do with it, but harder, perhaps impossible, to truly extract yourself from the possibility of contributing when no one knows exactly where the flow of money begins and ends.

That's part of what makes this so disturbing, for me at least.

xp, the cartels deliberately keep things quiet on the US side in order not to provoke the police. It's apparently common for people to be kidnapped in Texas, or wherever, and taken back across the border to be executed. Perhaps the lack of intervention on the US side might be down, in part, to a fear of provoking the kind of retribution the Mexican army has seen.

omar little otm regarding recreational drug use.

la lechera otm. we really have no idea.

what's disturbing also about some of these recent stories about bloggers getting hunted down and killed is that the cartels must be actively tracking down people speaking out against them, and since those folks in all likelihood tried to cover their tracks you wonder how they were found out.

yeah I mean I guess there is still a line between this and fair trade or whatever, cause I mean buying folgers might indirectly make some peoples' lives worse but it's hard to imagine that you could buy coke without, on some level, contributing money to an organization that commits brutal murders on the reg. I'm not defending rec drug use just mentioning that I don't think we could make a real difference on the demand side even w/ some coordinated campaign.

Yeah, I know about shootings on the U.S. side, just nothing that comes close to the degree of violence in Mexico.

U.S. troops would have to find a "reason" to go in like Panama 1989 or something. Seems weird that there's this huge uncorrupted force amassed on the border doing nothing because the chainsaw executions are happening outside of their jurisdiction.

just declare them to be what they actually are: terrorists.

When you snort cocaine, you snort terrorism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/world/americas/mexican-teachers-push-back-against-gangs-extortion-attempts.html

scared as shit for them. but godspeed.

The popular revulsion over extortion has become so powerful that the New People gang, a rival battling the Zetas, took pains during a recent display of grisly hubris to distance itself from the practice. The gang dumped 35 bodies, believed to be Zetas, on a main road near the port city of Veracruz on Tuesday with a sign saying, “People of Veracruz, don’t let yourselves be extorted. Don’t pay any more ‘quotas.’ ”

what am I supposed to do here? cheer?

here are no due dates or late fees – ever! Try New People for FREE...

is coke still huge? i knew a bunch of ppl who snorted it/smoked crack in 2001-02, but afaict I know very very few habitual users these days...

(of course I'm a lot less in touch w/ the drug scene these days...)

How does it end? The U.S. will neither legalize nor stop buying drugs. How else will the violence stop?

I don't think there really is an answer. Really the only thing they can do is invade Mexico which obviously isn't going to happen. The Mexicans in power need to stop their war against the drug lords but to be honest I can't imagine their goverment being competant at all, from what I've heard the election/hiring process is ridiculously corrupt. It seems the criteria to get hired are like 1) Who you know, 2) What you look like, 3) Who you'll sleep with, and then like 1000) If you're actually qualified for the job. I don't see how things can get worse.

OUT

I've been to Ciudad Juarez. When I was about 10 years old my parents drove me and my sister across the border to it from El Paso. It made a strong impression. The INSTANT we were out of our big old, banged-up, no-air-con Ford LTD, we were surrounded by children selling Chiclets. We got an offer from a guy to "watch our car" in exchange for cash. We wandered around an ancient covered market full of dirt-cheap tourist tat. One woman begging for money was carrying what looked like a mummified baby. It was fucking horrific and depressing and I was on edge the entire time. And that was in the late 1980s. I would imagine my parents wouldn't do it again today.

is coke still huge?

yes coke is still huge

Right now it's really unsafe to even drive into there, I've heard plenty of stories of cars/buses just randomly getting shot up on the street, it's one of the worst places in the world to be right now. On the plus side, property there is practically free. It's surprising that all this stuff is happening primarily on border towns. The scary thing is that previously 'safe' areas down south are now getting all this violence. I'd heard that Merida was mostly free of drug violence, because that was where the drug dealers families lived! Last time I was there, armored tanks filled the streets with enough ammunition to destroy an entire city block. It's terrifying getting interrogated by a police officer in a language you don't fully understand when the guy is holding an assault rifle and is almost certainly corrupt.

is coke still huge? i knew a bunch of ppl who snorted it/smoked crack in 2001-02, but afaict I know very very few habitual users these days...

― i'm hearing Bowie sing this, and it's the best single of 1985 (Drugs A. Money), Monday, September 26, 2011 11:37 AM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(of course I'm a lot less in touch w/ the drug scene these days...)

― i'm hearing Bowie sing this, and it's the best single of 1985 (Drugs A. Money), Monday, September 26, 2011 11:37 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark

A few years back, when I was 25 or so, my roommate and I were both ex-potheads. We were talking about the old days when we were 18, lol. I remember telling her something like "yeah, but I guess once you get to be our age people don't smoke pot anymore." WRONG. Just talking about observations you might have if you're out-of-touch with the drug scene.

I know lots of people who still smoke pot; a (not-quite-so-overwhelming-anymore) majority of the people I know still smoke pot. Some of them are on pills too, maybe even a few are still on meth...I mean, most of the folks I associated with are the working poor, so that probably explains a lot.

Just seemed like you guys know people irl who still do coke pretty regularly, whereas I don't (or if they do, I don't know about it).

Oh yeah, I know what you were saying. I have no idea who does what among most of my friends and acquaintances, just because I really don't party at all anymore. But if there's one thing I'm pretty sure of, it's that coke has not gone away.

look at any line outside any club, those people are coked to the gills

here's some ILX0rs that love cocaine

yeah i dont go to clubs Shakey; but still, good to know.

I dont know how much coke there is in the Midwest but I always assumed it was more of a southern thing. Here it's mostly prescription drugs that everyone is obsessed with.

it's so deeply ingrained in the culture now I kinda don't know how you would ever get rid of it - it's one of those things that codes as "glamorous"/"dangerous"/something you do if you're "young" and "wild" and "rich"

xp

much love for aerosmith as always but serious lolz at his "don't get all super-judgmental about cocaine when i am sure you have blood on your hands from SOMETHING in your life" stance on that thread. like i am pretty okay with "drawing distinctions" between the coke industry the shady and indefensible practices of certain aspects of food production because i have to eat to fucking stay alive, though i am not always happy with the choices available to me food-wise thanks to location or finances or hell just laziness, which makes me complicit, sure, but otoh i am pretty sure everyone who pays for a completely inessential-to-life mild powder-based buzz is helping to fund the mass murder of children for their fleeting pleasure, including me, back in the days when i did coke.

otoh i'd be pretty okay if humanity dried up and blew right off the planet, just for anyone who wants to beat me to the "well you dont HAVE to eat, either" zing. what can i say, life much like cocain use, a habit's a habit's a habit.

cokehead would say you're just addicted to food

learn to photosynthesize, asshole

I couldn't read Bowden's book. I hated the way it was written, or at least how the first few dozen pages were written.

One of the (naive?) best ways to help Mexico is to vacation there and help underscore that tourism dollars come easier than drug war money. There are vast hunks of the country relatively unaffected by the violence, at least for now.

strongo otm.

exactly where are the safe parts right now?

I couldn't read Bowden's book. I hated the way it was written, or at least how the first few dozen pages were written.

yeah, I had a similar experience but got about halfway through. writing style doesn't change drastically.

of course, I was hoping for a more historical breakdown and that just wasn't what the book was going for.

xpost It's a really big country, so the safe parts would be, I presume, most of Mexico. The worst stuff is by the border. But the Yucatan Peninsula is super safe, for example.

I dunno if you read my post upthread, but the Yucatan is definitely starting to get some of this. I was there last year for my now-wife's graduation and the party was cut short b/c there were threats to capture and kill people there. Some of her family members have been followed and have been threatened kidnapping if they haven't come up with some ridiculous sum of money. Most of it is just, threats but there have been a number of murders there and my wife fears that things are getting worse. As I mentioned, when I was there they were putting tanks on the streets and had a bunch of armed checkpoints on the highways. Merida was supposed to be a "safe haven" because apparently some gangs had families there, but I don't know how true that is now.

Yeah, Murder City is not historical -- like most of his books, it's pretty narrative in structure (I guess at the expense of dry facts?). I like the way he gives specific examples instead of blasting the reader with aggregate stats.

There are a lot of things I wish I could contribute to this thread but I just don't really feel like it's a good idea in a public forum.

but otoh i am pretty sure everyone who pays for a completely inessential-to-life mild powder-based buzz is helping to fund the mass murder of children for their fleeting pleasure

this does get kinda complicated though, bc people get pretty into cocaine, to a point at which the fact that it is inessential is not really relevant or can't be gauged. still otm, just saying. the whole thing does make you wonder whether a more mature attitude towards drugs would mean that there could be a conversation about it or an attempt to regulate it or for people to be better aware of the genealogy of it, but that obviously is not going to happen anytime soon.

also:

I've heard plenty of stories of cars/buses just randomly getting shot up on the street, it's one of the worst places in the world to be right now. On the plus side, property there is practically free.

lol

xpost Not the Yucatan, inland, but the Yucatan Peninsula, Cancun and south. I've been down there three of the last four years and it's been sleepy and safe. Going back in January, I'll let you know if it seems newly dangerous.

xp: oh, no, i didn't want that to come off as some kinda zero tolerance NO SYMPATHY FOR THE POOR WIDDLE ADDICTS thing.

but also i mean no one on that thread who was like "fuck yeah lines" on that thread struck me as someone who'd boosted their mom's tv to support their habit or anything. during my years as a nightlife reporter (cough) i knew a LOT of casual snorters and they were very much high-functioning it's-just-a-party types.

Veracruz is all right as long as you don't mind the occasional 35-body traffic jam.

http://www.travelweekly.com/uploadedFiles/MEXICOMAP4.pdf

there are twists and turns on the path from "buying cocaine from a bouncer at a club" to the money ending up in the hands of the people who are cutting the heads off anti-cartel bloggers, but the path certainly eventually leads there. i basically think that everything people do in life should be regarded from a certain moral standpoint but generally speaking i think there's no way in the current system for someone to be a moral cocaine dealer (or user, i suppose.) at least users can claim ignorance in many if not most cases.

Map of unsafe areas in the US (in grey):

http://www.va4u.com/images/maps/namerica/usa-blue.gif

and despite the fact that i haven't done any drugs except a couple of joints in the last four, five years, i still drink like a fish, so i hope it also didn't come off as attacking relaxation-via-mood/mind-altering-substances or even drugs as an idea. i'm no teetotaler. it's just that i don't tend to worry that, whatever the shit-ness of the industry, anheuser busch isn't gunning down school kids on the streets of delaware because they're worried dogfish head is cutting into their market saturation.

Phew, Josh. I live in one of the light-blue areas.

ha don't worry strongo, you didn't sound judgemental at all, i just have a bad habit of trying to coerce people to insert unnecessary caveats into short paragraphs in which they weren't really needed. you can still reasonably draw a line between a lot of people for whom it *is* a recreational choice, probably, sure.

but also i mean no one on that thread who was like "fuck yeah lines" on that thread struck me as someone who'd boosted their mom's tv to support their habit or anything. during my years as a nightlife reporter (cough) i knew a LOT of casual snorters and they were very much high-functioning it's-just-a-party types.

the unfortunate thing is that historically people in this country who have been against mind-altering substances have come across as (or have actually been) clownish prohibition-era throwbacks who would just as soon steal my precious beer fridge as they would seal off the drug tunnels into america, which means that anytime i make this sort of argument i feel like i'm got the ghost of nancy reagan nodding in agreement over my shoulder, which makes me feel weird to say the least. yes i realize she's not dead.

xpost Not the Yucatan, inland, but the Yucatan Peninsula, Cancun and south. I've been down there three of the last four years and it's been sleepy and safe. Going back in January, I'll let you know if it seems newly dangerous.

The place I'm talking about is Merida ("the white city"), which is in the Peninsula isn't it?

dont know why anyone is doing coke when adderall is so plentiful, easy to get, more or less legal and not murdering mexicans

xpost I believe Merida is about 4 hours from Cancun, for reference. So it's pretty far from the coast/beach stuff.

Some U.S. arrests in the consulate-employee assassination:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/us-crime-usa-mexico-idUSTRE78L7JF20110922

dont know why anyone is doing coke when adderall is so plentiful, easy to get, more or less legal and not murdering mexicans

ppl who 'do' adderall are nerds, is the thing

lawl

just want 2 thank omar little for his contributions to this thread & the other linked one, I think its a v important point & one that i think is v on point

like jess im more of a drinker fwiw

(subtext of that being, not a teetotaler either but i think it entirely makes sense to recognize the horrible consequences of supporting this industry)

well duh (re: consequences of supporting this industry)
who doesn't know that? does this mean that the tide has finally turned against the "it's a party" people?

i was just clarifying why i bothered mentioning i drink lol

dont know why anyone is doing coke when adderall is so plentiful, easy to get, more or less legal and not murdering mexicans

― max, Monday, September 26, 2011 6:22 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ppl who 'do' adderall are nerds, is the thing

― this display name must in some way reference laurel halo (Lamp), Monday, September 26, 2011 7:07 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ yeah why not just do nodoze and stay up all night watching monty python

or Mountain Dew and Family Guy?

if everyone who paid attention to this kinda news + considered themselves a 'kinda ethical consumer' stopped doing coke, would that be enough to change the market dynamic in any meaningful way? I'm gonna say probably not but I don't know how you'd even attempt to measure something like that.

this is like recycling your bottles or making sure you don't waste electricity or whatever - all things I endorse but I don't pretend like they're really 'making a difference'...real change can only come via national policy. but I mean, if you are someone who bothers to recycle your bottles, turn off the lights etc. and you still do drugs w/o really considering where they come from...well, that seems like a weird way to go through life.

― iatee, Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah must say that im always a little suspicious of peoples motivations in these situations re recycling or not doing coke or w/e - they often seem to have more of an appetite for condemning the actions of others than attempting to grapple w/the complexity of the situation or like acknowledge moral failings in their own lives

exactly where are the safe parts right now?

i lived in toluca from january to july and apart from one incident with a friend of mine getting shaken down by cops; i had no hassle. i travelled to oaxaca, queretaro, guadalajara, guanajuato and puerto escondido and had no hassle there either.

and im a lil surprised everyones all 'omg when will this violence ever end prob never' i mean its a direct result of a government thats more democratic and prosperous than its been before attempting to root out the endemic corruption and influence of the drug gangs - like whats happening is awful but if mexico is gonna continue to grow you cant have basically quasi governmental drug organizations playing such a prominent role in the country - and you know theres no way theyre going to go quietly - when you have huge malevolent forces in a country their reckoning is often v painful see like slavery and the civil war or w/e - of course the u.s. could just legalize coke and everything would be cool lol

yeah ive heard the violence is only really bad in like 5 of 30 or however many states xp

it should be noted that however bad violence in mexico is now it still pales in comparison to many central american and caribbean countries

im sure these stats are quite unreliable but fwiw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

well, the cartels are arguably more powerful than the government is at this point, as the Mexican political process is so ridiculously corrupt that they're steeped in everywhere. plus the cartels aren't really afraid of civilian casulties. if you go down there practically everyone is against a "war on drugs" as that's whats getting innocents blown up

btw I know the violence is only "bad" in a few states but it's starting to spread, which is the real problem. I can only really speak for the Yucatan where so far nothing horrible has happened but things definitely look different now than they did 3 years ago

im sure these stats are quite unreliable but fwiw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

I can't believe Canada even places on that list! What reason is there to murder someone up there!?

because real life has no 'suggest ban' option

I see Trinidad has moved past South Africa and has Colombia in its sights.

It's overspill from the same issue - T&T is one of the prime routes into the US / Europe for drugs from South America.

Didn't know things were that bad in Belize.

Surprised Iraq and Zimbabwe aren't on that list, but maybe it's the lack of stats.

if you go down there practically everyone is against a "war on drugs" as that's whats getting innocents blown up

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 10:00 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh i dont think this entirely accurate, in the polls ve seen people are in favor of fighting the cartels, they just dont think the government is doing a v good job of it

i mean having a more peaceful situation where drug gangs run shit isnt really such a great situation either, and the level of violence now is proof that the gangs have been destabilized, whether thats going to lead to a good outcome i have no idea

not a great situation but they're not going to just destroy the cartels in a few years, which I've heard is what the current president is trying to do. they're waay too integrated at this point. granted people's opinions change on this subject once they've had a family member threatened or kidnapped. obviously everyone wants them out but declaring a full-scale war on drugs that's putting tanks on the street and guns in the hands of potentially corrupt officers at nightclubs is not the solution

im curious to know what is the solution

I have no idea, dealing with such an omnipresent force that's not afraid to kill innocents and especially politicans is not going to be solved overnight. I would imagine it would have to start from the bottom up, first they can fix their political process to actually get intelligent people in office (believe me when I say their election process is a joke and half the people in office are in no way qualified), start paying the police more so they aren't forced to go corrupt to make ends meet, and weed out all their high-ranking politicians who are publicly connected to the cartels. Everyone in America was outraged that Cheney had a big connection to Exxon Mobil, imagine that on a much larger and worse scale and that's what's happening there.

yeah well its easy to say 'this is not the solution' but p much if youre going to try to root out these powerful well financed murderous gangs theyre going to end up killing a lot of people - im sure it could be done more skillfully than the mexican government has - but i doubt theres any sort of easy way to go about it - and of course mexico has tons other problems

anyway drugs need to be legal in the usa then we can relate to our own problems

Exactly - there are probably like 4-5 "real" solutions and so far legalizing drugs is the only one that makes any sense whatsoever

unfortunately mexico cant legalize drugs in the usa

I'm not talking in regards to what Mexico can do, I just mean a solution in general. Like I think a U.S. invasion could solve a lot of things but obviously that's not going to happen. As I mentioned I don't think Mexico can do anything that will show results anytime soon.

i mean having a more peaceful situation where drug gangs run shit isnt really such a great situation either

That was one of the interesting parts of the New Yorker article from earlier this year (linked somewhere here, though I think it's subscriber-only). It described a peaceful region, with rehab clinics run by the cartels, schools provided for, etc.--the Mafia template.

just do what they say and everythings cool

yeah must say that im always a little suspicious of peoples motivations in these situations re recycling or not doing coke or w/e - they often seem to have more of an appetite for condemning the actions of others than attempting to grapple w/the complexity of the situation or like acknowledge moral failings in their own lives

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 8:42 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is anyone here really 'unwilling to grapple with the complexity of the situation'? idk i think its perfectly legit to judge ppl at some level for using something casually that is obviously harmful to lots of people!

like, obv i have failings, i try to be honest about those too, but it doesnt mean im not going to condemn someone for making a decision that seems u know WRONG

like hopefully none of my failings happen to fund the murder of innocents (obv just being an american makes this impossible but i dont have many alternatives to paying my taxes unfortunately)

i feel like this exact conversation has happened on another thread

thread(s)

i am sympathetic to iatee's view, but i also know that because everyone can't stop doing coke, we have a national policy (drug war) that unfairly targets minorities and the poor.

maybe you can have a drug war that doesn't, idk

i feel like this exact conversation has happened on another thread

― Art Arfons (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 1:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

possible yeah i guess nothing that im saying is new in this convo, i guess i was taken aback by ice craem's argument but maybe hes just saving this one for the 'learning how to troll' thread

he has used that argument before - i think on me, in fact! it just seemed like deja vu.

D-40 totally and 100% otm.

whatever makes you guys feel better about yourselves, I guess

it feels just great to think about all the children dying in mexico, thats why i do it

well if we're gonna start talking the impotence of recycling we can just segue straight into "is anybof this shit reaaaaaaaaally gonna matter when the environment starts getting especially 'interesting' in 50 to 75 years?" (a: no.)

50-75 years? we're already there

not quite at the americans shanking each other for drinking water stage yet, but as always i welcome the apocalypse to get here as soon as possible.

recycling is a valuable activity

so is saving energy

doing coke, not so much

lol I love the A++++ iatee and frogbs trolling itt

i resent any trolling itt tbrr but i guess i've been pretty humorless about this topic for the better part of 20 years

iatee isnt trolling afaict

not on purpose, at least

i mean i think hes otm & isnt really contradicting anything, just on some 'just recognize that this wont stop the problem, the real problem is systemic' realism

Yeah, I agree with him wrt to that, but its his comparison to recycling that made me rmde.

ice cr?m's idea that the violence is not just a symptom of the status quo but a possible consequence of things getting better is way more "trolly" (ie provocative) imo

if only people loved one another, the world would be a better place

Tonight, I'm going to do a big rail and then throw away a bunch of plastic six-pack holders without cutting them up first.

I'm just one man, can't make a difference anyway.

recycling was just the first thing that came to mind when I needed contrast w/ something an 'ethical consumer' does

ice cr?m trolling is a given

xp

btw I want to point out that my wife is putting a lot of the blame on Calderon and kind of suggests that the he's a terrible president as evidenced by the fact that he hasn't been assassinated yet

ppl should probably stop doing coke, its obv super lame, sorry you dont know how 2 have fun w/e but lets get realistic demand is not going to become 0 and the us govt should probably just give up fighting the war on drugs already, how many crappy bands do we have to suffer i ask u

mexican drug lords did foster the people

ice cr?m's idea that the violence is not just a symptom of the status quo but a possible consequence of things getting better is way more "trolly" (ie provocative) imo

― banana mogul (goole), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its a more interesting point than saying that ppl who disdain casual coke use are secretly hypocritical or w/e

the response to which is "and?"

there are tons of great coke bands!

not recently i guess but man, the 70s, wild times

the hypocrisy isnt really all that secret is it?

fyi i was referring to the terrible buzzband 'war on drugs' when i was complaining abt 'the war on drugs'

oh

lol @ dayo

ice cr?m's idea that the violence is not just a symptom of the status quo but a possible consequence of things getting better is way more "trolly" (ie provocative) imo

― banana mogul (goole), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well its unclear if its getting better but its p much inarguable that the violence is a consequence of government activity destabilizing the cartels - thats p much the entire story of whats going on here

yeah must say that im always a little suspicious of peoples motivations in these situations re recycling or not doing coke or w/e - they often seem to have more of an appetite for condemning the actions of others than attempting to grapple w/the complexity of the situation or like acknowledge moral failings in their own lives

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 8:42 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is anyone here really 'unwilling to grapple with the complexity of the situation'? idk i think its perfectly legit to judge ppl at some level for using something casually that is obviously harmful to lots of people!

― sorry for party blogging (D-40), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:48 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

idk do you eat meat, travel in cars or airplanes, pay taxes in the usa - all these things hurt people, or are more accurately parts of systems that hurt people that would go on functioning quite well w/o your involvement - i will now judge you - no lol i wont because im not a self righteous ass

it's okay I'm here I'll do the judging

i mean people want cocaine so they can stay up all night drinking 25 beers and talking incessantly abt nothing, its really not their fault the u.s. government has outlawed the stuff thereby creating a huge criminal ecosystem that victimizes everyone in its way, its the governments

im not a self righteous ass

hmmm.

idk do you eat meat, travel in cars or airplanes, pay taxes in the usa - all these things hurt people, or are more accurately parts of systems that hurt people that would go on functioning quite well w/o your involvement - i will now judge you - no lol i wont because im not a self righteous ass

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 8:51 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um, but you can totally judge someone for doing those things too. i don't use cars i do judge ppl for using SUVs or driving when they don't need to or not voting for progressive candidates or all sorts of other things that are harmful to the world! Sorry im a 'self righteous ass' u self righteous ass

im not saying you arent allowed to judge people for those things, just that its a rather limited pov

I am judging all of you right now

i love judging people. tbh i have no idea what id get out of this place otherwise after all this time.

To judge the oppressors of humanity is necessary. Leniency is futile.

people try to extract the moral truth from the endlessly complex global situations we all live in, which good and reasonable, were all trying to find the best way, so we decide to recycle or not do cocaine or w/e, but of course our efforts always seem rather feeble compared to the problems of the world, theres a sense that we might not be having any effect at all, i think its at this point that the urge arises to want to make others conform to the moral conclusions weve reached, and were like mad cause someone isnt using cloth shopping bags

who in this thread doesnt use cloth shopping bags

up against the wall