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You speak as if all those who distribute drugs in USA are Mexican citizens. You parts of a false premise to try to prove your point.
That money does not help Mexico, now that 90% of the mexican banking system is in foreign hand we must check their contribution to money laundering.
In the USA does not wash money? Hell yes...
If you blame Mexico for let passing the drugs to USA, then you should also blame your country for accept it. Why so much technology and border patrols if the drugs still coming to your country?
If all the american border agents are honest, then how the drug enter to USA? in to invisible packets? Come on!
I've been in favor of some kind of enforcement over the border and what comes over it - but like you say, certain "powers-that-be" were getting very rich from letting things go one and now we're reaping what they sowed.
The corruption goes to the very top - in both countries. Neither is completely innocent, but drug addicts are more victim in this than anyone -- they aren't the ones who end up with money, they lose their money, their health, their families, their minds, and their lives.
What I mean - the drug dealers know full well that an addict is out of control and will rob and kill their own mothers if the addiction is powerful enough, drug addiction is a terrible kind of slavery - so I see the drug dealers, traffickers, and smugglers as truly evil.
For a city of it's size, Mexico City is not especially better or worse than other cities of comparable size. Muggings go on in all big cities, and certain parts of any big city might be bad while other parts are not.
Even in Juarez, much of the crime doesn't have to do with drug cartels at all, it seems that it's more about a break down of law and order, kids killing kids -- in part because Juarez went from being a small town to a very large city in such a sort time and massive migrations of people do not result in much stability. Many of the recent arrivals were not well equipped - many uprooted themselves from their traditional safety nets of friends and family, they left rural villages with almost nothing and the maquila wages may have sounded great but in reality the cost of living in Juarez makes the wages quite low. Plus Juarez lacked the infrastructure to grow as fast as it did, we saw years ago that many maquila workers were mothers of young children without day care or spouses to help raise their children with them. So surprise, now we hear of 15 year olds killing 16 or 17 year olds in gun battles.
I blame the maquilas more than drug addicts in the US for the problems of Juarez, it was the maquilas that caused the outrageously fast population growth and changed things so rapidly. The maquilas added to the instability and instant urbanization of Juarez.
...
Juarez has never been a safe city, yes we all know that. But it was never in the peril that it finds itself today... well, maybe during the Mexican Revolution it was. You seem to want to absolve the U.S. of any responsibility in all of this, which I find grossly misguided. Like I've said before, it's a two nation issue.
Reality Check:
Strangely, the breakdown of law in Juarez didn't happen 'till about 2 years ago, when, curiously, the maquilas which you so naively blame for spike in crime, have been around for 30-40 years. Without the maquilas there wouldn't even be a Juarez.
The argument that mothers left their kids at home alone without anyone to raise them and that's why they turned into criminals mod Mod edit: personal attack. Poverty and destitution are at play, as are promises of a better life for your family and the general disdain for education that exists in our society. There's a lot more research to back up my argument, and only speculative hypothesizing to back yours up.
Yes, Calderon and the Mexican government waged war on the cartels and the cartels waged war back, this is what has caused the RECENT (read, malamute, recent) spike in violence in border cities, and sparked chaos in non-border states like Sinaloa, Michoacan, Guerrero, Veracruz... just to name a few. But to say that U.S. drug addicts and in general, drug consumers in the U.S. are not to blame goes down in tales of the absurd.
Mod edit: personal attack
Last edited by Travelling fella; 03-25-2010 at 11:11 PM..
Juarez has never been a safe city, yes we all know that. But it was never in the peril that it finds itself today... well, maybe during the Mexican Revolution it was. You seem to want to absolve the U.S. of any responsibility in all of this, which I find grossly misguided. Like I've said before, it's a two nation issue.
Reality Check:
Strangely, the breakdown of law in Juarez didn't happen 'till about 2 years ago, when, curiously, the maquilas which you so naively blame for spike in crime, have been around for 30-40 years. Without the maquilas there wouldn't even be a Juarez.
The argument that mothers left their kids at home alone without anyone to raise them and that's why they turned into criminals is absolutley asinine. Poverty and destitution are at play, as are promises of a better life for your family and the general disdain for education that exists in our society. There's a lot more research to back up my argument, and only speculative hypothesizing to back yours up.
Yes, Calderon and the Mexican government waged war on the cartels and the cartels waged war back, this is what has caused the RECENT (read, malamute, recent) spike in violence in border cities, and sparked chaos in non-border states like Sinaloa, Michoacan, Guerrero, Veracruz... just to name a few. But to say that U.S. drug addicts and in general, drug consumers in the U.S. are not to blame goes down in tales of the absurd.
Maybe you're a drug addict, malamute, and that's why you want to cleanse yourself of this responsibility. Or maybe you look up to people in Hollywood and MTV doing lines on TV, or going to Celebrity Rehab. Or maybe you think drugs are harmless. Or maybe you're an overly patriotic American that can't imagine the U.S. is to blame for anything. But the next time you do a line, or the next time you shoot up, you are tacitly supporting a drug war south of the border.
Juarez has never been a safe city, yes we all know that. But it was never in the peril that it finds itself today... well, maybe during the Mexican Revolution it was. You seem to want to absolve the U.S. of any responsibility in all of this, which I find grossly misguided. Like I've said before, it's a two nation issue.
Reality Check:
Strangely, the breakdown of law in Juarez didn't happen 'till about 2 years ago, when, curiously, the maquilas which you so naively blame for spike in crime, have been around for 30-40 years. Without the maquilas there wouldn't even be a Juarez.
The argument that mothers left their kids at home alone without anyone to raise them and that's why they turned into criminals is absolutley asinine. Poverty and destitution are at play, as are promises of a better life for your family and the general disdain for education that exists in our society. There's a lot more research to back up my argument, and only speculative hypothesizing to back yours up.
Yes, Calderon and the Mexican government waged war on the cartels and the cartels waged war back, this is what has caused the RECENT (read, malamute, recent) spike in violence in border cities, and sparked chaos in non-border states like Sinaloa, Michoacan, Guerrero, Veracruz... just to name a few. But to say that U.S. drug addicts and in general, drug consumers in the U.S. are not to blame goes down in tales of the absurd.
Mod edit: personal attack
I didn't say the USA was absolved of all responsibility and I know the cartels have been pretty much handed the border to control as their own big money making machine.
It's not just drugs. There was a time when thousands of cars were stolen every year from El Paso and quickly whisked over to Juarez chop shops or to be driven by people over there.
The murders of the women were going on for many years, no one really cared about them because they were poor, easily forgotten and they had nothing to do with the USA. Nor with Calderon, nor with any drug war -- hundreds of murdered and mutilated women - very quickly forgotten - and no big deal to the pro-drug types who can't find their agenda in their deaths so don't care about them.
The murders of so many women and girls was a breakdown of law and order -- but since they were nobodies, no one considers their deaths any big deal, can't be used to promote any political agenda - so sweep them under the rug. Just humble maquila workers was all they were. Not important, easily replaced.
Because wealthy people have been affected in the last couple years, it suddenly is a big deal.
Because that's what it is, a sudden big deal but Americans didn't just start forcing traffickers to bring drugs over the border only 2 years ago and so start all the problems then. There was likely more drug use in the 70's and 80's in the USA than now.
The maquilas paid women - with young children $30 - $35 a week and there was no adequate day care for them. Children were left alone all day - but since they were poor children, they obviously don't count. I remember a case where a small house burned down with 6 young children locked inside. Two mothers had to go work in the maquila, left a 7 year old to tend to the rest and the investigators speculated the fire started when she tried to make food for the others. The mothers had locked them in from the outside to protect them from danger.
And no -- Juarez was not ALWAYS dangerous. Prior to the maquilas moving in, it was not dangerous beyond some family violence, a bar fight now and then.
Last edited by Travelling fella; 03-25-2010 at 11:06 PM..
Also let's not forget, they're still finding common graves of murdered men -- murders that go back far more than 2 years ago.
This didn't just suddenly pop out out of some drug law being enacted 2 years ago, or a sudden desire in Americans to use drugs that just arose 2 years ago. If you ever talked with Chihuahua Judiciales years ago, they could have told you back then that bad things were building. If you would have driven through the sierras in south and east Juarez, you would have seen the colonias where no police would go. Yes I know the Judiciales and Juarez city police were viewed as corrupt but there's more to it than that. There were neighborhoods cropping up YEARS ago before you thought there was a problem that were being run by gang lords. These gang lords did the policing, provided whatever protection for their neighbors, their power built up in time. Police couldn't go into those neighborhoods to look for stolen cars or they would be killed -- that's what they would tell you. Even if you wandered around Juarez, which you could do because it was mostly safe, you would get a sense about some areas that would tell you turn around. And yes, I believed and still believe some of these police -- I believe they saw things developing that would not end well. They predicted just this very thing --- well over 2 years ago, they saw the growing instability - most people obviously did not or didn't care to pay attention.
Reality Check: [list][*]Strangely, the breakdown of law in Juarez didn't happen 'till about 2 years ago, when, curiously, the maquilas which you so naively blame for spike in crime, have been around for 30-40 years. Without the maquilas there wouldn't even be a Juarez.
I would guess you are very young so probably never heard of the murders which began in 1993, and NAFTA was enacted in 1993 -- that's when the maquilas really took off.
Check how many of the murdered women were maquila workers. See if you can detect a pattern.
TIME.com - The New Frontier (http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010611/fcities.html - broken link)
The young women who live here are favored by the maquila bosses for their nimble fingers and obedience. But more than 200 women, many of them maquila workers, have been murdered since 1993 — often raped, strangled and mutilated during their long, dark treks home to remote colonias. Most large maquilas have begun providing bus service, but it has failed to stop the killings.
Someone is killing the young women of Juárez, Mexico. Since 1993, over 270 young women have been raped and murdered in a chillingly consistent and brazen manner. Authorities ignore pleas for justice from the victims’ families and the crimes go unpunished. Most disturbingly, evidence of government complicity remains ininvestigated as the killings continue to this day.
But the U.S. gateway that brought prosperity to this dust-coated city over the last four decades - more than quadrupling its population - also created a market for drug traffickers, migrant smugglers, gunrunners and car thieves. With the criminals came an explosion of violence and some of the highest homicide rates in Mexico.
Sometime in the early 1990s - police cannot say why or exactly when - the pattern of killings changed. Once confined mostly to drug feuds, brawls and gang fights, the slayings began to include large numbers of women and girls. Many of these killings were almost incomprehensibly brutal. Women were raped and strangled, crushed or mutilated. Some bore knife or teeth marks on the left breast. In some cases, victims' partially clothed bodies had been bound with shoelaces; often someone had carefully arranged the shoes beside the body. Body after body turned up with skin singed black by the sun or bones picked clean by desert vermin.
In attacking young women, the killer or killers were preying on victims furnished in part by the global economic forces so vital to Juarez's boom. The majority of the slain women worked outside the home. Many were migrants whose pursuit of 21st-century jobs had created a new phenomenon of mobile, independent - and vulnerable - working women, many living away from their more traditional rural communities for the first time. Of those victims who were employed, an estimated 40 percent worked in maquiladoras, the assembly plants that meant billions of dollars to international business and Mexican households.
El sorpresivo ataque se realizó por al menos siete jóvenes de entre 13 y 17 años de edad según testigos, los cuales bajaron con armas largas bajaron de una camioneta tipo Explorer en color azul y de un Jetta en color plateado para disparar en múltiples ocasiones sobre el par de amigos.
Location: The world, where will fate take me this time?
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After much pondering I thought that if we are going to go all the way and really wipe cartels and organized crime, then perhaps it would be easier to convince americans that the only way for Mexico to win the war is with full US support.
If the US does all what it can to help Mexico every country on their side of the border both countries could benefit much from this.
After much pondering I thought that if we are going to go all the way and really wipe cartels and organized crime, then perhaps it would be easier to convince americans that the only way for Mexico to win the war is with full US support.
If the US does all what it can to help Mexico every country on their side of the border both countries could benefit much from this.
I think that would be more feasible - but I don't think there's a simple solution. It would require figuring out what is producing the instability - which I think includes NAFTA because in many ways it was about exploitation of poor people.
Like anything - some of it was good, but the way young girls were brought into work and were considered discardable, and someone should have considered safety aspects, day care, lighted streets -- because people at the top had every reason to know.
So many people were lured to Juarez and for many it's turned from a dream to a nightmare - and the people whose families lived in Juarez have also watched their town become a nightmare.
I think it was wrong the way they did the maquilas - built them on the border instead of where people lived already, forcing people to relocate which severed families and disrupted traditions and safety nets. It was all about the convenience of the top executives who wanted their cheap labor but for themselves wanted to live in the USA. They had no real interest in the lives of their cheap workers, didn't care that they were living in homes built from discarded pallets and nearly freezing in the winter. They didn't care at all about inadequate day care for the children of their working moms, they didn't care about safe transportation. The Mexican government should have done more too to protect it's own people.
That's why I think things changed back in 1993 - before then there were smugglers and drugs and there were problems of poverty - but things were not all that unstable prior to that. There were also a few "twin plants" back then too which provided jobs to both sides of the border.
I'm familiar with Puebla and the Volkswagon plant - and the Germans who reside in Puebla and add to the town -- to me that was the right way to do it - and Puebla is stable, calm, no real crime.
Now there's a big problem if crime starts to scare off the twin plant executives - if they close more maquilas - then what do you do with all the many thousands of people who rely on them - because Juarez doesn't have much else to offer that many people.
People do not come to Juarez to work in maquiladoras. They come to switch to the U.S. illegally, they fail as they stay in Juarez as they do in any other border city.
NAFTA has nothing to do with the violence unleashed by drug trafficking.
What happens is that the U.S. has given way to combat the drug but the Mexican government does not have a solid strategy for doing so.
The army is seeking to eliminate the drug traffickers do not stop them, and this results in the spiral of violence that we are living in Juarez, Monterrey and other border cities.
The solution is quite simple. Strict control of the border Mexico - USA. That U.S. does not allow drugs from entering its territory, and that Mexico does not allow arms entry to his own territory.
This could terminate the problem.
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