Mexico

[MarshAviator]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,491964,00.html
"At this point, what we're focusing on is spillover violence," Cesinger told FOXNews.com Thursday. "The immediate concern, if any, would be that."

More than 5,300 people were killed in Mexico last year in connection to criminal activity, and some experts predict things will get worse. Along with Pakistan, Mexico was identified in a Department of Defense report last year as a country that could destabilize rapidly.

If that were to happen, officials are concerned that the drug violence could cross the Rio Grande into southern Texas.

Cesinger said the plan currently does not address a potential flood of refugees, though "It may be something that comes into consideration."

"Worst-case scenario, Mexico becomes the Western hemisphere's equivalent of Somalia, with mass violence, mass chaos," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "That would clearly require a military response from the United States."

It looks like things on the border are getting (Nasty) questionable.
As soon as better info (from non-mainstream media) becomes available I will post it.
My wife and I have some sources we are exploring to see if any subtext can be garnered regarding the instability of Mexico.
Clearly things are deteriorating rapidly.
The few people who I have talked to in bordering countries of Central America have been just as puzzled as to why it is happening now. But it also appears the Mexican economy is just about spent.
The current price of oil is also having an effect and Mexican nationals earning income in the U.S. are finding work less available. The cross border transfer of wages to family of various Mexican nationals back home is slowing to a trickle.
Of course most of this is anecdotal, and finding hard statistics is going to be challenge until later in the year.

The fact that Texas is taking this very seriously should be a red flag, they don't expect much in the way of Federal U.S. response, which is reasonable.

[John]

I heard a news report that said that in the 1980s there was only one
drug cartel, but that it split into 5 cartels in the 1990s, and all
of them are warring with all the others right now.

I still can't get a feel for how this is affecting ordinary people
(except, of course, for those that get caught in the crossfire).

Does anyone outside of the cartels themselves care which cartel
"wins" or "loses," sort of like rooting for a baseball team? Or do
all the ordinary people simply consider them all to be criminals,
each the same as every other one?

Sincerely,

John

[Chim Richalds]

I became really interested in Mexico after I read an article in Foreign Policy Magazine (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms. ... ry_id=4684). Basically, it posits that the drug cartels started in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico (major city: Mazatlan), and has expanded from there. It seems that for a while, the drug cartels only fought each other, but then turned on the government after the current President, Felipe Calderon, started cracking down. There also seems to be an increase in fighting between the cartels as smuggling routes have become more scarce as a result of increased US vigilance on the border.

I wanted to find out more about the demographics in Sinaloa state since John has always speculated that the major fault line in Mexico was between ethnic Amerindians and ethnic Europeans. It seems that this is the case in the south in the state of Chiapas, where there has been a simmering insurgency for years. But Sinaloa is in the northwest of the country, and this conflict seems to be completely separate from that one.

From what I have read from various sources, Mexico's ethnic makeup looks something like this:

European descendants--15% of the population (descendants of the Spanish and French colonizers, market and government dominant, primarily in and around Mexico City, and in northern states)
Nahuatls--15% of the population (descendants of the ancient Mexicans (Aztecs), predominantly rural poor, primarily in Central Mexico)
Mayans--10% of the population (descendants of the ancient Mayans, predominantly rural poor, and primarily in the south, around Oaxaca, Chiapas, and the Yucatan)
Mestizos--60% of the population (mixed european and amerindian ancestry, can be urban or rural, live all over Mexico with the exception of the far north and far south.

It looks to me like Sinaloa has a predominantly Mestizo population, and the drug cartels are thus made up of this group. Again this is my hypothesis, but it looks to me like the mestizos from Sinaloa, Guadalajara, and Monterrey are rebelling against the european-dominant government forces. Another interesting fact in the Foreign Policy article is that the heads of the cartels are described as "hillbillies" from rural Sinaloa, who dress in snakeskin boots and ten-gallon hats, with silk shirts and large belt-buckles. The article goes on to say that many urban youth across Mexico are adopting these hillbillies' style of dress and speech, in order to be "cool." I wonder if this has any significance?

One more thought: I think (but am not sure on this) that the Mestizo group make up the majority of the latest wave of Mexican immigration (illegal) into the US.

[Matt1989]

Apologies for poor formatting; you're better off clicking the link.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 15,00.html
Mexican Gangs Kill Cops to Force Ouster of Chief

(CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico) — Gunmen killed a police officer and a jail guard Friday and left signs on their bodies saying they had fulfilled a promise to slay at least one officer every 48 hours until the Ciudad Juarez police chief resigns.
The slayings were a chilling sign that criminal gangs are determined to control the police force of the biggest Mexican border city, with a population of 1.3 million people across from El Paso, Texas.
Ciudad Juarez police have long come under attack, and many officers have quit out of fear for their lives, some after their names appeared on hit lists left in public throughout the city.
Police officer Cesar Ivan Portillo was the fifth officer killed this week in Mexico's deadliest city.
Police already were on "red alert" — meaning they could not patrol alone — after cardboard signs with handwritten messages appeared taped to the doors and windows of businesses Wednesday, warning that one officer would be killed every 48 hours if Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduna does not quit.
Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz insisted Friday that he would not back down.
"We will not allow the control of the police force to fall in the hands of criminal gangs," he said.
More than 6,000 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico over the past year as gangs battle each other for territory and to fight off a nationwide crackdown by the army. Nearly a third of the slayings have taken place in Ciudad Juarez, and more than 50 of those dead are city police officers.
Violence also has spilled across the border into the U.S., where authorities report a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels.
Homeland Security officials have said they will bring in the military if the violence continues to grow and threatens the U.S. border region.
"The violence is spreading like wildfire across the Rio Grande," said George Greyson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "It's a major national security problem for us that is much more important than Iraq and Afghanistan."
Also Friday, the U.S. State Department renewed a travel advisory warning Americans about the increased violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Some Mexicans have questioned whether President Feline Caldron's two-year, nationwide crackdown on drug gangs was worth all the killings.
But Caldron and his administration have defended the fight, with Economy Secretary Gerard Ruin Mattes saying on Wednesday that if Mexico gave up its fight against the cartels, "the next president of the republic would be a drug dealer."
Portillo and city jail guard Juan Palo Ruin were killed as they left their homes before dawn to head to work, city spokesman Jaime Toreros said.
Three days earlier, assailants fatally shot police operations director Sacramento Peruse, the chief's right-hand man, and three other officers who were sitting with him in a patrol car near the U.S. consulate.
The bodies of Peruse and one of the officers were sent to their home states Thursday to be buried, and the city planned to hold a ceremony Friday for the two others from Ciudad Juarez.
City spokesman Jaime Toreros said police have been asked to patrol with their guns in their hands.
Reyes Ferriz earlier ordered police to travel in groups of three patrol cars, with two officers in each vehicle.
Orduna has not spoken publicly since the threats. A retired army major, he took over as chief in May after former Public Safety Secretary Guillermo Prieto resigned and fled to El Paso following the slaying of his operations director.
For Orduna's protection, the city has built his bedroom at the police station so he does not have to go home. He also travels in different vehicles when he does go out.

I think it's Mexico, not Pakistan, that is most likely to collapse in 2009. Imagine if this plan actually works...

[John]

A web site reader has e-mailed me the Stratfor report.

http://generationaldynamics.com/ww2010/ ... ratfor.pdf



John

[Matt1989]

Oops.

Juárez police chief Roberto Orduña Cruz resigned Friday after the drug cartel killed six city police officers this week and threatened to kill more unless he left the force.

"I cannot place my sense of duty above the lives of my officers," said Orduña in a press conference.

Orduña, a former army major, was hired last May to oversee the department of 1,600 officers.

More than 300 homicides have been recorded for this year in Juárez alone, most related to the cartel drug war.

.....

[StilesBC]

Total government revenues in 2008: $256B

Estimated government revenue from oil exports in 2009: $121B

Average price of oil used to make that assumption: $85

Mexico could have a budgetary shortfall of $70B - and that is only based on lost oil revenue. Surely they will have lower income tax receipts like every other government.

Peso folding like a California bank. Briefly touched 15 to the dollar on friday.
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=FXM&p= ... 0920471239

[John]

-- Ethnic partitioning of Mexican drug cartels

I've read through the Stratfor analysis, and I've made the following
notes:

Juarez Cartel is in the north, and is is allied with Barrio Azteca,
so we can guess that it's based on Aztec descendants.

The Sinaloa/Guzman cartel is allied with the Beltran Leyva cartel and
the Mayo cartel. They're all in the south, in Mayan territory, so we
can guess that they're Mayan descendants.

The Los Zetas/Gulf cartel is so widespread, and is on the eastern
(European) side of Mexico. So we can guess that it's run by European
descendants.

That leaves the Arellano Felix Organization/Tijuana Cartel, which is
allied with Beltran Levya, so I'd guess it's based on Mayan
descendants, although this is counter-intuitive since it's in the
Northwest. So, of all the guesses I'm making, I would consider this
one to be the weakest.

The above provides a fairly reasonable partitioning of the cartels
into three groups: Descendants of Aztecs, Mayans, and Europeans. Now
it finally begins to make sense how this could lead to a civil war.

Furthermore, the army (which represents the market-dominant
Europeans) is growing in power.

Indiscriminate killing of civilians, and increasingly gruesome
killings are a sign of increasing crisis war mentality.

Possible scenarios: The obvious scenarios are that the regional turf
wars expand into full-fledged fault line battles that grow into a
civil war.

The "Financial Topics" thread has a graph showing that consumption of
alcohol has collapsed in the last few months, as the depression takes
hold.

http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... 2496#p2496

It's reasonable to assume that the same thing is happening with
drugs, meaning that the income to the cartels is collapsing as well.
This is sure to raise the level of conflict, and a triggering of a
civil war may not be far off.

Sincerely,

John

[jwfid]

Excellent stuff you guys.

I have a personal interest in this country as I live on the border and a part of my wife's family lives there. Over the last year, I've seen quite a bit more of a Mexican Army and Federal Police presence. Local violence across the border seems to be more in the news too (not normal everyday violence either).

I made a recent visit over there a couple of days ago and noticed that nobody stops at the stop signs anymore. These are not "California" stops; most drivers aren't even slowing down, where before they used to. I'm speculating that the locals know the local police don't have power anymore since the Army is in town now. I should ask around sometime, but this experience was really creepy.

I worry about Mexico. As few as 6 months ago I was impressed with all the progress they had made in the last ten years. I'd really hate to see it all fall apart into a civil war.

John, I think your analysis is missing what side normal everyday people will take. I'm afraid they will side with the local drug gangs for now, which is too bad. I get the feeling they (the people) resent "occupation" by federal forces. I do hope they eventually side with the federals though.

John, I'm not so sure I agree with your Aztec, Mayan, and European conclusions. What about the Mestizos? The map displaying cartel areas of control was really helpful to see where the fault lines might be.

I'm thinking that this is the start of a period not unlike the middle stages of the "last" Mexican Revolution with decent into total chaos and no unity.

Joe

[John]

Dear Joe,

> I made a recent visit over there a couple of days ago and noticed
> that nobody stops at the stop signs anymore. These are not
> "California" stops; most drivers aren't even slowing down, where
> before they used to. I'm speculating that the locals know the
> local police don't have power anymore since the Army is in town
> now. I should ask around sometime, but this experience was really
> creepy.

Maybe drivers are afraid that if they stop then they'll be kidnapped.

> John, I'm not so sure I agree with your Aztec, Mayan, and European
> conclusions. What about the Mestizos? The map displaying cartel
> areas of control was really helpful to see where the fault lines
> might be.

In situations like this, whenever there's ethnic intermarrying, the
family almost always still retains loyalty to one side or the other,
usually the mother's side.

If you feel that my conclusions are wrong, then what do you believe
are the correct conclusions?

Sincerely,

John