How DEA Agents Took Down Mexico's Most Vicious Drug Cartel

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/drug-enforcement-agency-mexico-drug-cartel/419100/?single_page=true

by jseliger • 11 years ago

50 58 11 years ago

SlyShy• 11 years ago

An ultimately futile thing to do until we change our own drug policies which fuel the economic incentives for such cartels to exist. Unless we change out laws and end prohibition new cartels will continue to spring up out of economic necessity.

HillaryBriss5• 11 years ago

It's a fantasy to think that the cartels and their violence would stop existing.

Even if governments legalized all drugs by eliminating all anti-drug laws and agencies, the cartels and the people who run them would quickly find another path to profitability. They would find or create another industry in which applying their violence gives them a competitive advantage.

armitron5• 11 years ago

Let them do that then. It's not as if it would be easy. Prohibition showed how effective legalization can be (and I don't mean just marijuana). Legalize everything across the board. That means pharma-grade cocaine, heroin being sold without prescription (and taxed) to any adult that wishes to buy them.

Alas, let's not pretend that the 'good guys' (at least the americans) want to solve the drug problem. It results in lucrative profits that can be kept off the books and fed into various "programs", and has also led to the establishment of a massive bureaucracy that will be hard if not impossible to dislodge.

Someone else mentioned the movie Sicario in this thread. It's pretty bad in terms of plot, but one line comes to mind: One of the characters that plays a CIA agent says: "If only 20% of the population could be pesuaded to stop smoking and snorting that shit..." in order to conveniently shift the blame towards the populace. As if that worked with alcohol, or cigarettes or anything that can short-circuit the pleasure/reward neural pathways.

But I'm digressing here. A bad movie does not a point make. The real CIA knows full well I imagine that legalization is the only real solution to the problem (even if it comes with its own costs) but of course the real CIA also needs endless suitcases full of dollars to fund its operations.

DanielBMarkham• 11 years ago

Think through this. How many other high-margin, high-volume products exist that can be moved through Mexico?

Sure, they'll continue existing, probably get into government. But they'll be nothing at all like they are now. It will be a huge net gain for all, even the gangs themselves.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

If there were other industries in which the application of violence was a competitive advantage, why are there not currently organizations in those industries.

HiLo3• 11 years ago

I know most people here mean marijuana legalization when they say drug legalization, but there is absolutely no way meth, cocaine, or heroine will be legalized within the next 15-20 years, which is fairly long-term from a business perspective, by which I mean that they are not worried about their status as a going concern even if marijuana is legalized in the US. Their violence also is a complement to their ability to hold control of the routes / networks to actually move these products in any significant volume. It ensures they get paid whether they control production or not.

Furthermore, one industry in which violence will prove to be an asset but hasn't yet had an opportunity (like the guy below me claims) is profit recovery from legal dispensaries inside the US. Dispensaries and their owners have huge targets on their backs.

clort• 11 years ago

One of the problems with people who are in the violent gangster industry is that they are trapped there. The business which enables them to live is illegal, so its difficult to go to the police when they are forced to do things they don't like. If your competitor is providing a substandard product and undercutting your sales and putting you out of business, then there is no recourse but to shoot him, eh? In the legal world, you can go to a regulator and when he is prosecuted, he will be losing sales. Most drug takers I would say aren't really interested in funding violent gangs..

If drugs were legalised, then you might find it unpalatable that the same people were now providing the drugs legally and their past sins seemingly forgiven, but the incentive to commit violence is now a lot less, and things will change.

I don't know the history exactly, but after prohibition I bet the gangsters didn't immediately become peaceful CEOs of successful corporations.. but then after a few intervening years, the alcohol companies are no longer violent, so obviously something has changed.

awakeasleep• 11 years ago

Thats not true. There isn't another product on the planet that has the margins or demand of illegal drugs.

I agree that cartels and violence would continue to exist, but they'd do so in a vastly reduced form. Raketeering is orders of magnitude less profitable and more difficult than selling drugs.

dllthomas• 11 years ago

If "applying their violence" in another industry is more profitable than drugs, why aren't they doing that anyway? If it's less profitable than drugs, then forcing them to make that change reduces their power and growth.

HiLo3• 11 years ago

This is a very simplistic view of the cartels, and a very US-centric view as well. This doesn't really factor in the local / native view of these groups, which see them much more as semi-heroic for standing up to the imperial Americans and corrupt, oppressive home governments. The cartels recruit heavily and are huge organizations - giving those poor, unemployed guys from backwood areas a mission "greater than themselves" really is a timeless strategy that has worked well for thousands of years, especially when that vision involves power (violence) and wealth.

tptacek2• 11 years ago

The suggestion that violent Mexican drug cartels enjoy public support is an extraordinary claim that you should support with evidence. Polling suggests otherwise; cartel violence is one of the top concerns of the Mexican public.

The idea that organized crime syndicates that rape and murder men, women, and children might be seen as a symbol of independence from American oppression strikes me as an argument that might make sense in the airless vacuum of an Internet message board, and in no other place.

discardorama• 11 years ago

Money quote from the article: “Drug enforcement as we know it,” Herrod [the DEA agent] told me, “is not working.”

fucking_tragedy• 11 years ago

That would be refreshing to hear if you didn't know the next conclusion to be drawn would be, "Therefore, we need to double down and increase funding."

patrickaljord• 11 years ago

By spending billions of dollars to stop people from committing victimless crimes.

mbrutsch• 11 years ago

In other countries, no less. I wonder how the American public would like Mexican government authorities doing the same thing within our borders?

Team America, World Police.

randomfool• 11 years ago

"Mexico's Most Vicious Drug Cartel" - ¿Dónde está Zetas?

WildUtah4• 11 years ago

The Zetas didn't emerge until after op's story ended.

cauterize2• 11 years ago

If you like stories like this, check out the movie Sicario for a very eerie telling of cartels and the police.

seivan• 11 years ago

Narcos on Netflix is also pretty good.

Pretty good is underselling it. I think it's better than Game of Thrones :)

cauterize2• 11 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion! Going to look into Narcos

yeukhon• 11 years ago

Also worth mention the DEA plots in Breaking Bad, especially the scene when bomb exploded next to a bunch of DEA agents, that was terrifying.

armitron5• 11 years ago

I enjoyed the movie cinematography and music, but the plot was simplistic to say the least and the characters completely one-dimensional.

I was extremely surprised however to see a major hollywood movie portray the CIA as top dogs in drug trafficking (even if that connection was obscured by a little whitewashing).

Maybe things are changing after all.

NickHaflinger• 11 years ago

'How DEA Agents Took Down Mexico's Most Vicious Drug Cartel', and how it was replaced with a similar organization within a week. Besides the drug money is keeping a number of western economies afloat.

betolink• 11 years ago

Also, if you're interested in this topic I recommend this TED talk from Yale professor Rodrigo Canales: "The deadly genius of drug cartels" https://www.ted.com/talks/rodrigo_canales_the_deadly_genius_...

atomicbeanie• 11 years ago

Try harder seems like it has been done in this area for some time. Can some creativity get into this process? It gets worse the more we invest. The cartels are ever more monstrous.

How DEA Agents Took Down Mexico's Most Vicious Drug Cartel

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