American Lessons from Mexico’s Drug War

There is one city where, on average, four people are murdered per day. This city has the highest murder rate and has been dubbed “the most dangerous city in the world.” You might be wondering if this place is somewhere in Pakistan? Afghanistan? Iraq? Are these high casualties a result of horrific suicide bombings carried out by Islamist radicals? Try none of the above. This violence is a stone’s throw from the United States, in a place called Ciudad Juarez. This is a city in a country whose daily death toll in its drug war tops the daily death tolls for both Afghanistan and Iraq. And sadly, this is probably the most underreported story in America today.

As America wages its own drug war, albeit in a less violent way, and stands poised to vote on the legalization of marijuana in its most populous state, California, in November 2010, Americans need to do some serious soul-searching about the future of their country. And they need not look any further for answers than the tragedy that has become Mexico in the 21st Century.

Mexico has become a country where the myriad drug cartels have literally integrated themselves into every strata of Mexican society—the government, military, police, business, and the media. If you are an “honest” cop, or a soldier who supports the government, you must grow eyes in the back of your head. You never know if you will be killed in a gun battle with narco-terrorists, or by your fellow men, who secretly work for the cartels. Politicians are routinely ambushed and assassinated, along with their families, just for running for elected office.

No one is off limits. A new police chief in his first day on the job is gunned down. A man from the U.S. side of the border, visiting Mexico, is gunned down along with his first grader son. Teenagers and young adults post a Facebook note advertising a party, and cartel gunmen show up and massacre them. A Mexican Marine slain in a gun battle with gangsters is laid to rest on Mexican TV, as his female relatives mourn over his casket. That evening the women are brutally murdered in their home. Heads roll, literally, into businesses, down the street, or any place where intimidation is needed.

Freedom of the press? Forget it. Journalists are routinely murdered for writing articles critical of the cartels, and are often told exactly what to write if they want to live long. Businesses are extorted, family members kidnapped, pop singers threatened, car bombs detonated. And as many as 72 bodies are found in cartel “dumping grounds”—mass graves where their victims, usually rival drug traffickers or kidnap victims, men and women, are just tossed, like garbage in a heap.

It makes one wonder how long before the government starts teetering on the brink of becoming a national security issue for the United States, an extreme example being a failed state like Somalia. U.S. Joint Forces Command, predicting “worse-case” scenarios for North America, has considered the Mexican government’s collapse within 20 years.

Mexicans, media on both sides of the border, as well as Americans who are left of center and in the pro-drug legalization camp blame drug consumption in the United States for Mexico’s woes. The problem with that argument, is that we have drug-dealers here in the USA, both domestic and from Mexico, and we certainly have as many guns here, if not, more, than in highly gun-prohibitive Mexico. The U.S. has been waging our own “War on Drugs” since the 1980s, while President Calderón of Mexico’s war on drugs was launched in 2006, yet U.S. society is not teetering on the brink of failed-statehood, with U.S. troops and police forces battling drug cartels in the streets of Small Town, USA. Why is this?

One reason is history—although next door neighbors, the United States and Mexico could not be culturally farther apart. Mexico inherited a Spanish colonial system based more on wealth accumulation for the crown and individual soldier-governors, racial and social castes, and the social dominance of the Catholic Church. What followed independence was muted progress, several wars and political instability through years of dictatorships (think Santa Anna and Díaz). This set up a centuries old model of top-down corruption and governmental oppression which still exists in one form or another throughout Mexico today.

The United States on the other hand evolved from an English model of colonialism that established the thirteen colonies not as a far off land to be plundered by military conquistadors, but by religious refugees and learned men, who hoped to create a model of British society back home, based on the rights of man and the rule of law. The United States inherited this system, which enabled the Founding Fathers to create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the separation of church and state, an armed citizenry, States’ Rights, and a cultural disdain of perceived oppressors, whether large or small, foreign or domestic.

For good or bad, the cultural tone was set for Americans in 1776, and we never looked back. Put simply: We love freedom. We believe in the rule of law, states’ rights, and the right to own guns. We love and respect our military and police forces. We hate corruption, whether in Washington or Bell, CA. And we hate bad guys, from Hitler to Saddam, from Castro to Chavez, from the Italian mob to the Mexican drug cartels. Except for the period leading up to the Civil War and for a brief time in the Vietnam-era, Americans have rarely had to fight each other for the “soul” of our country, what we stood for—we always knew what it was.

That is why the drug cartels, or even Al Qaeda for that matter, are unable to make the violent inroads in the United States that they are able to make elsewhere. The corruption level just isn’t high enough among Americans, who still believe in law and order. Americans, both in the citizenry, in government, and in our military and police forces, just wouldn’t tolerate or accept the levels of violence here that are being perpetrated in Mexico and elsewhere.

Mexico is fighting for her life. She is fighting for the “soul” of her country. Up until now that fight has been whether Mexicans will surrender to the rule of the cartels, in return for peace and a chance to make a living, or stand with a potentially corrupt-beyond-repair government that offers little but more of the same. It doesn’t matter how many guns are smuggled into Mexico from the USA and elsewhere. It doesn’t matter how much consumption in America drives up the prices and demand for illegal drugs. Until the Mexicans stand up and decide what they will believe in—the rights of man and the rule of law, or drug-fueled violence and anarchy—the war will continue south of the border.

So far, America’s “soul” has remained intact. Think about that in November, when Californians will go to the polls to vote whether marijuana should be legal or not.