Mexicans consider negotiating with cartels

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The murder of a well-known author's son in Mexico's out-of-control drug war has become a key catalyst for organizing nationwide protests set for Wednesday against crime and violence.

Juan Francisco Sicilia, 24, was found dead in a car along with four close friends on March 28 near Cuernavaca, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Mexico City. Police also found the bodies of two close relatives of one of Sicilia's slain friends nearby.

Police said they found a message in the car signed CDG -- the initials of the Gulf drug cartel organization.

Juan Francisco was the son of Javier Sicilia, a poet and columnist for the daily La Jornada and the weekly Proceso, two of the country's leading publications.

The senior Sicilia was out of the country at the time of the killings, and called for the protests as soon as he returned to Mexico.

"We are sick and tired of you politicians... because in your struggle for power you have torn asunder the fabric of the nation," Sicilia wrote in an open letter released Monday.

"You have been incapable of creating the consensus that the nation needs to find unity," he wrote.

Sicilia derided President Felipe Calderon's massive anti-drug sweep, launched in late 2006, as a "poorly designed, poorly managed, and poorly led" affair that "has left the country in a state of emergency."

While the motive for the crime is unclear, the slaughter has shaken Mexican apathy and compelled activists in 15 cities, including the capital, to organize mass rallies.

In an interview with the daily La Reforma, Sicilia said it was time for the government to negotiate with the country's leading drug cartels.

Mexico has to live with the drug traffickers, he said. If the government "is not conducting the war successfully, then let's go for negotiations. Wars end in agreements, after all... and this is going to end in a pact, sooner or later," Sicilia said.

Why, he asked, does Mexico have to "protect the back" of the United States, a country "that is not helping us at all."

At an earlier memorial service for the victims Sicilia vowed to stop writing poetry. "I can't write poems any more, poetry doesn't exist for me," he said.

Mexico's raging drug war is blamed for most of the 34,600 killings that have been carried out since Calderon launched the nationwide crackdown in late 2006.

Separately an activist group said that 59 women and girls had disappeared in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez last year.

Across the whole state of Chihuahua, "107 women went missing in 2010 and have still not been found, and 71 of them are minors," the activist group Justice for our Girls said late Monday.

With 59 disappearances including 39 minors in Ciudad Juarez, the city continues to witness "serious human rights abuses against women," the group said, adding the figures were official ones from the Chihuahua authorities.

Most of the minors who went missing were aged between 13 and 17, it added.

The figures are a stark reminder of a wave of killings between 1993 and 2003 when some 400 young women died.

Ciudad Juarez is considered the most violent city in Mexico, with more than 3,100 homicides in 2010.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.692381365d745fc505df40c97673c9ec.991&show_article=1

If Mexico makes a pact with the cartels, that would pave the way to have it declared a terrorist state.

Yeah they should. Doesn't mean they have to agree to anything. And, I guess the role of the U.S. is to solve everyone's problems just like the UN. There is always going to be a demand for drugs, just make it so the demand doesn't equate into large sums of money that can then be turned around to challenge a Government's authority. Sad story.

Mexico made pacts with the cartels a long time ago through endemic corruption and the willingness of politicians and government officials to accept bribes from cartels in return for their complacency. That's what brought them to this situation.

The only difference now is the cartels have grown powerful enough to have the upper hand, and officials don't get bribed to be complacent, they get killed when they are not.

It's really a shame. Mexico could have been a nice place to live with a standard of living similar to the US had the Spaniards implemented different colonization philosophies.

Maybe, but if they openly made a pact, the facade would be gone and diplomatic protocols would no longer be enough to hide tensions between our countries.

As for their standard of living, the Spanish have been gone 190 years. They've had lots of time to build a stable society and more natural resources than most European countries to do it with.

End the drug war and the cartel's power would dry up.

Building a stable society is about more than just time and resources.

Valid point.



The cause of a problem need not remain present after the problem's inception to perpetuate it.

Most individuals do not have the capacity to spontaneously think and act in manners foreign to them, even when an effort is made to do so.

For example, in writing "Brave New World", Aldous Huxley attempted to create a society counter to the one he lived in at the time. But despite his efforts, you will still find the presence of the mentalities and mind set of his society, which he could not completely free himself from. The doctors are all men, the nurses are all women, contraception responsibility for women who weren't sterile fell entirely on women, it was the man who drove, the elevators were operated by elevator operators, etc.

On topic of the article, it's really sad for the dad to have lost his son... =(

I don't think what the problem is, is the cartels themselves. It's really the demand for illegal drugs. You could legalise drugs, regulate and tax the heck out of them, but the cartels will simply find a way to do it cheaper, easier and more availible then the 'domesticated' versions.

Marijuana is one of the things that sells. To be honest, I see a lot of folks on here talk about using it, and I think that's a shame. Almost half of my immediate family members have used it, and I've seen what it does to a person in time. To be extremely blunt, in time it makes them stupid and effects their memory. It's rarely mentioned because people want to gush about it's 'benefits' and why they shouldn't stop using. Also it gives a higher risk of lung cancer then even cigs if you smoke it, but I don't see that ever acknowledged either.

But if people in the US simply don't buy them and learn to deal with their problems instead of chemically numbing themselves, then maybe Mexico might have a future. But I don't see people as being that considerate, and as long as they can 'get a high,' then they don't care if they've just funded a murder/rape.

Mexico could have become a great nation, but even after the colonial period ended, it was a puppet for others. Case in point: The First & Second Mexican Empires
The Mexican American War
The US interventions in Mexico
etc

The problem is the mentality of the people, which was inherited from the effects of Spanish colonization.

There is a feudal mentality which persists throughout much of Mexican society. They subjugate themselves to land owners and "bosses" in many places still. In fact, the gardener at my previous residence, who was born in Mexico but a legal resident, told me one day as he was gardening the front yard "You people ain't nobody. You don't own nothing (land or a house), you ain't nobody. Mr. Jacobs (my landlord and his boss), he owns all the houses I garden. I only answer to him."

I was a bit taken aback at first because it seemed to come out of nowhere in what I thought was a civil conversation. But I then I realized he wasn't talking about me specifically, but people in general, and was expressing what I realized was a common mentality among many Mexicans (not Mexican Americans though). The jefe is the man in charge.

A lot of Mexican migrants I meet are illiterate despite Mexico's public education system because they were born and raised on ranches which were usually far from schools. The ranchers frequently provide housing for their ranch hands, as well as meals as part of their payment. Often times, the rancher will also pay for medical expenses. In other words, the ranch hands are usually entirely dependent on the ranchers and a submissive mentality to those perceived as people of power, whether legitimate or not, is perpetuated.

Maybe the USA should have kept all of Mexico after the Mexican-American War after all.

Anyways, I fully agree that repealing the Drug War™ is the only solution to this, short of another USA military action south of the border, leading to full annexation of Mexico.

Mike

Also, an interesting discussion from late last year on where things might be going with this whole mess:

http://www.redstate.com/laborunionrepor ... ghanistan/

Mike

I lived through a period in Colombia where the gov. tried to negotiate with the drug cartels and their drug-paid paramilitary armies. The result was disastrous. The cartels DID stop the violence against the civilian population but crime, political assassinations and drug trafficking increased exponentially.

When things got out of hand a new presidency was elected that had zero tolerance for it and literally declared war on the drug cartels. When that happened the cartels turned to the one trump card they knew would work: target the civilian population. Car bombs went off, daylight shootings happened all over the country and their paramilitary raided police outposts and small cities. It was real bad.

But the gov. did not cave in and instead gave the military free hand to deal with the cartels. 4 years later the major cartel lords had all been hunted down and assassinated (while it was not publicly admitted, the commando units that hunted them had one order: kill them) and they also took the families of the cartel lords hostage even if they fled the country.

Today the drug trade still exists..but its handled by a completely new generation of drug lords... who know that if they target the civilian population they and their families, no matter where they run, will die.

What mexico needs to do is get its army rolling through the streets and cleaning that scum out.

Legalise drugs for a year and see what happens.If that does not work, exterminate the cartels by force.