Mexico's drug war is not going well...

 

A Mexican soldier patrolling near a church where two priests were murdered by the Cartels. LA Times/AP.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) has responded to increased violence in the country by deploying the troops. LA Times. As a candidate Amlo vowed to take the soldiers of the street, blaming them for the massive amount of violence in the drug war. But now, 200,000 troops from the Army and Navy are deployed in Mexico, the most since the Mexican Drug War began 16 years ago. Amlo also decided that his newly created National Guard would be under military command and not civilian control, like he vowed. Critics say that putting troops on the street increase violence while questioning Amlo's motives for doing so, saying it has more to do with him staying in power than anything else. Mexico's Drug War is responsible for the majority of the 35,000 homicides in the country and since Amlo has taken office 30,000 more people have gone missing. 

My Comment:

I have been remiss in not covering Mexico's Drug War recently, despite the fact that there was a huge flare up of random violence recently. This violence was different than most cartel violence because instead of being directed at government forces or rival cartels it targeted random businesses and civilians. The Cartels are rioting like they were part of a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, its that bad down there. 

Why are they doing it? Because some leadership of the Cartels were arrested. The Cartels have responded with violence and innocent people are getting killed or having their lives destroyed for little reason. 

With that being said, I do think that Amlo is right to deploy the troops. The LA Times articles mentioned police but the cops in Mexico are famously corrupt and while the Army and Navy are about the only institutions that aren't. If they had to rely on the cops to do something about the cartels nothing would ever come from it. 

However, I don't think that he is using them in the right way. Instead of using the full military might of Mexico to kill and arrest the cartels he is using them as a buffer force to try and keep the cartels from killing each other. That seems counterproductive for what should be obvious reasons. 

I honestly don't know of any other way to deal with the Cartels. These aren't the American mafia, they are hardened criminals with military weapons and power. They are essentially private armies engaged in a major conflict with each other and a low level insurgency against the government. You can't deal with that with police, even assuming that Mexico had reliable police. They obviously don't so the military was always the way to go.

The article was surprisingly critical of Amlo. Amlo is, of course, a huge leftist and I remember all the glowing articles about how he was great back when he got elected. Now the LA Times is darkly hinting that he will take over the country illegally when his term ends in 2024 and blames him for much of the violence. To be fair, he does share quite a bit of the blame for the violence, after all he is President, but still, it's surprising that a left wing rag like the LA Times has turned so thoroughly on Amlo. 

Mexico's absurd level of violence never gets much coverage in the United States, even though it is dramatically more likely to impact us compared to Russia and Ukraine or whatever the outrage of the day is. American citizens routinely get killed in the violence and we do have to worry about our politicians going corrupt because of the Cartels as well. But there is almost no political push to do something about the Mexican Drug War at all. If you hear about Mexico at all it's about immigration through and from there, but that's about it. You would think a war where 30,000 people die a year right across the border would be a huge issue but the media and both parties routinely ignore it. It's just insane to me that it is like that. 

Mexico's drug war could end a few ways, with the most likely one being one Cartel destroying all of the others and cornering the market. That's probably what is going to happen but the Cartels are too evenly matched at this point and the Mexican government is trying to prevent as much conflict with the Cartels as possible. The other possibility is that the Cartels get destroyed by the government, but that doesn't seem too likely. My guess is that the war will continue to drag on for years and years with about this level of violence until one of the cartels takes over or people simply don't put up with it anymore and take down the Cartels. Neither outcome seems likely in the short term future though...