Do Either Mexico or United States Really Want to Win War on Organized Crime? Sergio Aguayo - Proceso
go to original February 25, 2016

Enrique Peña Nieto and Barack Obama in Washington (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

It may sound absurd, but it seems to me that the Mexican and United States governments have never really wanted to win the war against organized crime, nor are they interested in the human cost. I am proposing this as a working hypothesis because of the obstinate indifference with which they treat the wild spread of illegal firearms. In seventy percent of cases, these originate in a black market fed by the U.S. (the rest coming from dishonest police officers and other countries).

One piece of evidence that supports this hypothesis appears in reports of the confrontation between “El Chapo” Guzmán’s guards and Mexico's marines during his most recent capture. The Mexican government made no comment on the type of arms they found. For their part, the media mentioned the topic only in passing, and when they did so the details were vague. Carlos Loret de Mola provided the most accurate account in his column for El Universal. Loret de Mola said that the Marines found

"AK-47’s and R-15 [...], grenades, three Barrett .50 caliber machine guns and two Russian-made RPGs [rocket-propelled grenade launchers]".

Precise figures, however, were lacking, and Loret de Mola erred in classifying the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles as "machine guns" (strictly speaking, these are "anti-material rifles", weapons of war designed to destroy military equipment).

Over in the United States they only became interested in El Chapo’s weapons when Fox News revealed that one of the eight guns analyzed by the ATF [U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms] had been among the 34 Barrett firearms sent to Mexico as part of Operation Fast and Furious (between 2009 and 2011, Washington allowed criminals to buy and transport firearms to Mexico in order to track them when they were used to kill or injure Mexicans). It has yet to be established which of Calderón’s officials approved such an atrocity; to date more than 200 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious rifles.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Related: When Smart People Make Mistakes: Economists Wage War On Drug Facts – Analysis (Eurasia Review)

Translated by Helena Redman

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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