Mexican Drug War: 10 Shocking Facts

In anticipation of President Obama's trip south this week -- first to Mexico on Thursday and then to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago from Friday to Sunday -- here are 10 shocking facts about the Mexican drug war from the international news site GlobalPost.

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1. A recent U.S. government report suggests that "Two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico."

2. Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world: An average of 70 people are abducted each month.

3. More than 1,100 guns found discarded at Mexico shooting scenes or confiscated from cartel gangsters were traced to Texas gun merchants in 2007.

4. One of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, escaped a maximum security prison in 2001 by driving out in a laundry truck.

5. This year Forbes magazine included Joaquin Guzman, a Mexican drug lord, on its annual billionaires' list.

6. A drug cartel hood named "The Cook" reportedly dissolved the bodies of 300 victims in acid as part of the grisly work he committed for crime bosses.

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7. The FBI has reported 75 open cases of Americans kidnapped in Mexico.

8. In a poll by the daily newspaper La Reforma, Mexico City residents ranked public insecurity as a worse crisis than the economy by a 5-to-1 margin. In the past year, 20 percent were crime victims.

9. In the past year, Mexico's civil drug war has claimed some 6,300 lives.

10. Grammy-nominated singer Sergio Gomez was kidnapped and his genitals were burned with a blowtorch in December 2007, presumably for singing narco corridos, or "drug ballads."

A directory of GlobalPost's in-depth reports of Mexico's drug war can be found here.

And read more from GlobalPost on other issues here.

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Comments

[Thirdpower]

"3. More than 1,100 guns found discarded at Mexico shooting scenes or confiscated from cartel gangsters were traced to Texas gun merchants in 2007."

Out of the hundreds of thousands that the Mexican authorities have confiscated and refused to have traced.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m5d7-Mexican-warehouse-exposes-gun-grabber-cartel-lies

The Cartels are getting their machineguns and heavy weapons from south of the border and from the Mexican military itself.

[scarab23]

As long as these folks have a currency that is outside the law, we can expect more of the same. Take away the currency, you take away the gangs, the killing. I refer you to an op-ed I wrote for the Chicago Tribune last Sunday
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0412smugglerapr12,0,6083722.story

We need to start doing this differently if we expect different results than we have been getting for the past 70+ years

[cylindar]

It would appear to me that Americans don't really care if Mexicans get shot up etc.. If they did they would stop buying drugs and not sell them guns. If you care about Mexican lives and you take drugs, stop now.

[PartyPartyParty]

It would appear that you need to do some broader reading on drug policy. Prohibition has never worked. Legalization with regulation and taxation does work.

[LiberalBuzz]

Legalize and it ALL goes away.

[OrganOfThought]

amazing isn't it

i have no intention of smoking it

and yet the logic of legalizing it is overwhelming.

people who are against legalization are either ill-informed or have ulterior motives.

[LiberalBuzz]

A few of the biggest reasons are the economics of the Prison/industrial complex. Some towns in America have placed their entire future in building prisons to employ their people.

In California, the prison/industrial complex is so strong it has backed down every single attempt to lower the populations and bring about reform.

If you DARE to go against the prison guards union you will be squashed like a little bug. They will attack you, defame you, do character assassination against you and your family. They have HUGE bank accounts and will spend every dime to destroy you. NOT just defeat you but destroy you.

They are the major proponents for longer heavier sentences. They lobby intensely for the 3 strikes and you are out law irrespective of just how minor the crime is.

The stories of men being sent to prison for life for stealing a piece of pizza or two Snickers bars are true and some of them are horrendous. When an initiative was introduced to get rid of that idiocy and make 3 strikes for actual felonies and not misdemeanors, the prison guards union attacked in full force claiming it was going to release child molesters right into our neighborhood and let rapists move in next to girls dormitories and on and on.

THAT is the true crime here.

[guajiro]

Especially when the biggest prison complex is owned by the ex-Vice President himself; Dick Cheney. On top of having stock in the biggest consortium of prisons, Cheney also has stock in the company that ferries thousands of illegal aliens from where they're caught to detention centers (which he also has stock in) and to export ports. And yet no judge in America has been able to find in any ruling that there exists a conflict of interest. We'll be the laughing stock of future students studying history of the late 20th and early 21 century.

[RobinSeattle]

I don't even drink coffee (don't like the taste) and yet I am also for legalization.

Prohibition never works. Legalize pot and prostitution NOW.

[winningticket]

Prohibition is the narco terrorist's best friend.

[PartyPartyParty]

I'll second that.

[research]

ban pot, help terrorists!

[PartyPartyParty]

It depresses me to see alarmist news items like this. Mexico's suffering is a result of the "war on drugs" that has fed US prison and gun industries for 30 years. Mexico doesn't need more military help. Mexico needs the United States to stop the southward flow of guns and legalize drugs. Now.

Mexico's being on the verge of falling apart? That is one big cow patty. Take a look at this link to the web site for the annual Guadalajara Book Fair. It is free to the public.

http://www.fil.com.mx/ingles/i_index.asp

At the 2008 fair, 600,000 people attended, including 60,000 children. They were all buying books. The fair focuses on the literature of a different country each year. Bookstores order the country's literature, Spanish translations are commissioned, and school children study the authors attending the fair. Nobel (and other) Prize-winning writers speak at the Fair's forums.

In the United States, "book" fairs are insider trade shows with fat entrance fees where publishers and agents pat themselves on the back for their million-cover sellers (or more recently whine at each other that they can't guarantee a big enough print run to make a profit). Libraries are shutting daily. The close study of literature is scorned as old school and elitist. And half my fellow Americans haven't read a book in the last year.

Which country is falling apart again?

[cylindar]

Yes, and the book fairs there are funded by the cartels.

[PartyPartyParty]

....and your source of information is....?

[SaucyB]

whoa! coulda done without reading #10. just LEGALIZE ALREADY!!!!!!!!!

[RaWash]

Mexican drug-lords sell hard-drugs NOT marijuana, are you for legalising all drugs?

[FlyFishinMainah]

Actually, yes. Drugs such as heroin and cocaine are far too dangerous to be available on an unregulated black market.

[rich3324]

The sell pot also along with meth.

[mergina]

WE NEED TO ISOLATE OURSELVES FROM MEXICO AND TEXAS. Texas is just an extension of Mexico.

[twistedrascal]

Yea, isolation is a really great long term plan...heck we need to just isolate ourselves from the entire world. Of course economies in this day and age, can realistically work all alone and interconnectedness is just a random theory ????

[AN2009]

It's kind of frightening that more people (7,337) have died in Mexico's drug war than the number of American servicemen (4,250) who have been killed in the Iraq War.

[loki]

11th fact.
Ivy Greed corporate and wall street types are involved and profiting from this too.

[FlyFishinMainah]

Truestory.

[Borborigny]

Fact #11: It could all disappear with a stroke of Obama's pen. Prohibition = death.

[Bcasey11]

MAke drugs legal, the drug lords won't get money, problem stops, prohibition never works.

[FlyFishinMainah]

Yay for sanity!

[davidwayneosedach]

This is a good time to invest in Mexican real estate. The peso /per dollar is high and the cost is low.

[loki]

not really. Mexico has been known to pull a Chavez in the past and just take over foreign assets. Especially residential property owned by Americans, but they have taken company properties before too. Your welcome to, but not me.

[MexDiva]

the last time that something like this happened was en 1918 with the Nationalization of Oil -previously in the hands of Americans and Britons. Since then, ever any foreign property has been taken.

So, yes, it is a great moment to buy property in Mexico, you just need to be vary careful where in Mexico. I will recommend big cities like Mexico, Monterrey or Guadalajara in good neighborhoods. Not in Michoacán or Sinaloa and any empty land close to touristic places. If you pretend to own an hacienda, you better live there, otherwise you will find your place with peasants living there.

On contrary in any good neighborhood in big cities, your neighbors will take care of your place -they don't want peasants and poor people around them either. And I reasssure you will make a great investment. These properties always go up.

[morris111]

sueinmn - I'm so sorry that your sense of reality has been clouded and confused by the anti-gunners and their rhetoric, but automatic weapons are illegal in Texas unless you have a Classlll firearms license. These are difficult to obtain and those that have them must meet very strict requirements. The automatic weapons in Mexico are coming from various places. Weapons are being bought/stolen from the Mexican police and military, weapons are obtained from military deserters, and weapons are coming in from Central and South America and the Mideast as well.

[MexDiva]

it is illegal to buy them, but not to sell them. The market for this kind of weapons is Mexico, no Texas. And actually Central and South America are not weapon producers -are you kidding me?- and the Middle East is not a producer either.

The producers are in Europe and America only, the rest of the world buy from them.

[Mexitli]

Israel is a major arms manufacturer and supplier,.

[Nicon]

Time for Voices like yours to start listing 10 possible solutions for the Drug War.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/home