Guns from the United States Are Still Flowing Into Mexico on Pena Nieto's Watch Bill Conroy - The Narcosphere
go to original June 23, 2014

The value of private-sector weapons and related training delivered to Mexico during the first 10 months of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency tallied $78.4 million and was on par with similar defense-article shipments during two of the last three years of Felipe Calderón’s presidency.

That is significant because the Peña Nieto administration has gone to great lengths to downplay US intervention in Mexico’s drug war and instead worked to focus media attention on so-called economic reforms, such as opening up Mexican lands to US oil producers. The narrative pushed to date from Los Pinos is that Mexico is winning the drug war, with declining homicide numbers held up as the proof.

But the revelation that private US companies are continuing to flood Mexico legally with guns and ammo and other articles of war at a rate comparable to what played out under the bloody reign of former President Calderón seems to contradict the Pax Romana drug-war policies espoused by Peña Nieto.

In an editorial penned for the Washington Post in late November of 2012, only days before taking office officially on Dec. 1 of that year, Peña Nieto wrote that it would be “a mistake to limit our [US/Mexico] bilateral relationship to drugs and security concerns.”

“When I meet with President Obama on Tuesday — just days before my inauguration — I want to discuss the best way to rearrange our common priorities,” Peña Nieto added. “Both of our nations are seriously affected by organized-crime activities and drug trafficking. Working against them must be a shared responsibility. I will continue the efforts begun by President Felipe Calderón, but the strategy must necessarily change.”

That change, however, does not appear to involve curbing the legally sanctioned flow of deadly hardware into Mexico, based on data released by the State Department on the sale of private-sector weapons to Mexico and other nations.

Read the rest at The Narcosphere

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