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PRICE OF DRUGS: The corpse of an unidentified woman lies on a street in Juarez, Mexico on Nov. 29, 2008 and it is assumed that her death is the result of a drug cartel dispute. (Guadalupe Perez/AFP/Getty Images )
The U.S. Department of Justice called the Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) the “greatest organized crime threat to the United States” in their 2009 National Drug Assessment report. Last year the Mexican drug cartels killed close to 5,700 people.
A war has been raging along the Mexico-U.S. border as DTOs continue to fight for territory. The conflict between rival gangs leads to near daily discovery of bodies by Mexican authorities and open firefights between the gangs and the Mexican police and military are bringing chaos to border towns. The conflict has also crept its way the U.S. through the involvement of street gangs and arms smugglers.
When President-elect Barack Obama met with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón on Jan. 12, former U.S. Drug Czar and retired Four-Star General Barry McCaffrey expressed his concern about the effect that the Mexican drug war is having on the United States.
"Mexico is on the edge of the abyss—it could become a narco-state in the coming decade,” said McCaffrey in a public statement. "Mexican law enforcement and soldiers face heavily armed drug gangs with high-powered military automatic weapons.”
According to McCaffrey and numerous reports, 90 percent of the weapons used by the cartels were smuggled from the U.S. "Yet the United States has provided only modest support to the Mexican government to date—the $400 million/year Merida initiative."
McCaffrey referred to the amount of funds given to the Mexican government by the U.S. to fight off the cartels as "a drop in the bucket compared to what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan ($700 billion to date). We cannot afford to have a narco-state as a neighbor."
Fred Burton, vice president of counterterrorism and corporate security with Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence company, said that the effects of the drug war are already being seen in the United States.
“There’s a tremendous amount of spillover violence into the United States which needs to be discussed,” he said.
“As you look at these events as they take place in the cities, the homicides and so forth, what you’re finding is that the cartels have that capability in carrying out violence in inner cities around the United States,” Burton said. “So they can, for example, order a hit from Mexico inside the United States. They can order a home invasion. They can order a kidnapping.”
The war taking place between the cartels in various border towns are over the control of trade routes into the U.S. and other spots of interest to the DTOs. Yet beyond that, the cartels are gaining influence over crime in the U.S. through their connections with street gangs and criminal enterprises.
“As you look at it from the aspect of homeland security, meaning we invaded Afghanistan, we’ve invaded Iraq, under the auspices of the war on terror to secure our homeland here, and yet we have violent insurgent-kind of activities taking place in Mexico with cross-border operations, cross-border abductions,” he said.
Mexico’s President Calderón is making the drug war a main priority. When he took office in 2006 he deployed thousands of military troops and federal police officers to various spots in Mexico to try and end the operations of the drug cartels. A war has raged between the cartels and Mexican forces since.
An estimated four cartels control most territory in Mexico. The cartels are among the primary smugglers of drugs such as methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, and heroine into the United States. Street gangs within the U.S. then act as contacts who distribute the drugs. The cartels also carry out their own criminal operations inside the U.S. such as kidnappings and the murdering of rivals.
“We’ve had cross-border abductions, we’ve had children snatched in cities like Austin,” Burton said. “We’ve had cartel members dressed up like Phoenix S.W.A.T. cops take down a Jamaican drug dealer’s house and kill a drug dealer [then] get involved in a firefight with the cops”
The Mexican cartels control the drug distribution networks within many U.S. cities including Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix. “Which also means they control the street violence and crime, because again, it’s about geography and the supply chain,” Burton said. “This is not just a border issue. This is an issue that affects our entire country."
According to Alex Alonso, an expert on U.S. street gangs and the founder of the website, www.streetgangs.com, it is relatively easy for the cartels to seek out drug buyers and distributors. “I could probably go to Phoenix and find out who the main drug dealers are in a matter of days,” said Alonso. “If you’re talking about a Mexican cartel that has resources and the strength, it’s not going to be too difficult to find out who is a good contact on the U.S. side.”
“You’ve got a handful of gangs in these cities on the U.S. side and it’s pretty easy to make a connection with the gangs there because they’re always trying to make money,” he said.
“I would agree that the street gang situation is very disorganized. But what you do see is that there are always a handful of individuals in one particular gang that have that business savvy. That’s either the individual that’s going to be sought after by a cartel or that’s the individual who is going to look to better his financial situation by trying to create these connections and networks.”
In the face of the growing conflict, Mexican officials have called for more support from the U.S. Maureen Meyer, the associate for Mexico and Central America from the Washington Office on Latin America said that the issue will play a major role in the connection between the U.S. and Mexico.
“I do think there are ways to work with Mexico to tackle this drug-related violence,” said Meyer. “It’s going to be a key part of the relationship for President-elect Obama and Calderón for the next few years.”
According to Meyer, the conflict is making life very difficult for people living in Mexico. “We’ve seen a lot of schools that have been closing down, given threats to the teachers, bodies are appearing in different parts of the cities. It’s just a mentally taxing situation where you’re faced with the violence all the time. It’s not something you can avoid anymore because it’s on the street on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
“This is a long-term problem and I don’t think there’s any magic bullet to how to address drug problems and drug violence in Mexico and in the United States.”
“As long as there’s a demand for drugs in the United States there will be a way for drugs to come into the countr