U.S. urged to help more in battle against cartels

By Dane Schiller and Dudley Althaus Houston Chronicle

As gunbattles raged across western Mexico this week, a new U.S. Senate report warns the United States must do more to bolster the south-of-the-border war on drug-trafficking cartels.

"Violence in Mexico continues unhindered without any signs of slowing," states an accompanying letter signed by the seven members of the U.S. Senate's Caucus on International Narcotics Control, including Texas' Sen. John Cornyn.

Skirmishes more akin to guerrilla warfare than underworld score-settling killed dozens of people and drove several thousand more from their homes this week as gunmen battled both criminal rivals and security forces.

The Senate report praises Mexico's efforts and partially echoes Mexican officials' complaints that the United States isn't doing enough to stop the southward flow of narcotics proceeds. And it concurs in part with the official Mexican position that escalating violence reflects the desperation of drug gangs battered by the government offensive.

Organized crime mayhem has killed about 40,000 people in Mexico since in little more than four years.

The Mexican government's efforts have resulted in the capture of dozens of the country's most wanted traffickers. But those arrests actually have spawned more criminal organizations, notes the report, prepared in part with assistance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Work together

The report declares that United States needs to work with Mexico to take on everything from how the cartels tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border; to the way they move billions in narcotics profits home. The cartels exploit weaknesses of police in both countries, the report notes.

Mexico has about 450,000 law enforcement personnel, notes the report, which contends police remain under trained, under equipped and that corruption runs rampant.

Among the glaring shortcomings pointed out is the need by both governments to learn more about how the cartels sneak home between $18 billion and $39 billion in cash proceeds each year: "Trucks filled with bulk cash literally are being driven across the U.S.-Mexico border," notes the report. "Far too little is known about the financial structures and procedures of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations," it continues.

"On both sides of the border, U.S. and Mexican authorities' efforts to understand drug trafficking organizations' finances are severely lacking."

One of the ways in which gangsters launder money is with prepaid gift and credit cards, which allow them to hide cash and avoid bank reporting requirements.

The senators' call for a redoubled U.S. effort comes in a week when bloody battles, among gang rivals and between them and security forces, rampaged through much of Western Mexico, claiming dozens of lives.

At least 30 men were killed in Nayarit state, on the Pacific Coast north of the tourist mecca of Puerto Vallarta, when gunmen ambushed a rival convoy making its way down a major commercial and drug trafficking route that ends at the Arizona-Mexico border.

Feuding factions of the La Familia narcotics organization fought it out in rural areas of Michoacan state, down the coast from Nayarit, forcing as many as 2,500 villagers to flee for their lives. Hundreds of Mexican troops and federal police were dispatched to the conflict zone Friday to restore order.

"What we are witnessing is the power and the firepower of these criminal bands," Oscar Herrera, Nayarit's attorney general, told a news conference. "Of course, these aren't ordinary criminals."

'True desperation'

Thomas Harrigan, the DEA's chief of operations, told senators this week the lessons learned from the rise in violence from fighting Mexico's drug cartels should be used to shape new efforts to fight the cartels' spread to Central America.

"We must manage expectations, and accept that as (counternarcotics) efforts increased in Mexico, so too did violence," he said.

"We will work with our foreign partners to explore means of lessening the degree of any similar outcome in Central America," he continued. "We must recognize that, in such violence, we are witnessing acts of true desperation — the actions of wounded, vulnerable, and dangerous criminal organizations."

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Analysis: Mexico needs more defense spending to fight cartels

By Pablo Garibian
Reuters

Mexico's hopes of crushing the country's drug cartels through sheer military force appear doomed unless it ramps up defense spending, currently one of the weakest in Latin America.

President Felipe Calderon broke with tradition by sending in the army to crack down on drug gangs in late 2006, but pressure is growing from a resurgent opposition to spend more.

The army-led offensive on the cartels has cost nearly 40,000 lives and battered support for Calderon's conservative National Action Party (PAN), which now faces an uphill struggle to retain power in next year's presidential election.

Although Calderon has increased defense spending by some 25 percent over the past four years, the death toll in the drug war has steadily accelerated.

"It's a total embarrassment what we're spending on the army with the problems it's got right now," said opposition politician Rogelio Cerda, who chairs the defense committee in the lower house of Congress.

"The army definitely needs additional resources."

At present soldiers in Mexico earn just two thirds of what their counterparts in Colombia do, even though Mexican gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is some 50 percent higher.

The plans for the 2011 budget foresee Mexico spending over 40 percent more on salaries for staff at state oil firm Pemex, which employs roughly half as many people.

Low wages are blamed for fomenting corruption in the security forces, as some soldiers boost their income by working for drug traffickers. One of Mexico's most notorious cartels, Los Zetas, was even founded by renegade troops from the army's special forces.

Critics of Calderon's strategy say sending in the army has only increased the violence in Mexico and exposed the troops to the full force of corruption at the hands of the cartels.

However, security analysts say the defense ministry, which did not respond to requests for an interview, must beef up its ability to track and intercept traffickers with helicopters and patrol boats to have any chance of success.

Cerda's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) leads the PAN in opinion polls, which also show security is a growing concern in Mexico. The PRI already dominates the lower house, and Cerda said its deputies firmly backed higher spending.

NEW THREATS

In 2010, Mexico spent $4.86 billion on its armed forces, or some 0.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show.

Brazil spends four times the amount Mexico does as a share of GDP, while the figure in Chile is over eight times higher.

Only in Guatemala, often cited as the main central American transit point for drugs between South America and Mexico, is government spending on the military equally modest.

Mexico's defense outlays are low partly due to its traditional doctrine of non-alignment and rejection of military intervention after decades of post-colonial warring that culminated in its bloody revolution of 1910-1920.

Today, faced with the growing financial clout of criminal groups like top trafficker Joaquin Guzman's Sinaloa cartel, Mexico is struggling to secure its 2,000 mile border with the United States with the resources it deploys.

"They have to raise the budget to at least 1 percent of GDP but above all make better use of it," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at consultancy Risk Evaluation. "That means the army and navy must be dedicated to protecting the borders."

Drug war violence has stirred up tensions with the United States and put investment and tourism revenues at risk in Mexico, suggesting that a move to bolster military spending could ultimately reap rewards for the next government.

Analysts argue Mexico ought to emulate Colombia, where the government sent in the army to curb the power of cartels and opponents like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas who have also profited from the drug trade.

Its success has come at a price, with Colombia tripling its military budget since 1991 to 3.7 percent of its GDP.

Although Mexican servicemen earn almost twice what they did six years ago -- around $800 a month -- wages in Colombia are 50 percent higher, at some $1,200, according to official data.

"While Colombia has enjoyed very significant success ... the power of the drug traffickers is growing in Mexico, just as the threat to the state and its citizens is," Colombian military analyst Alfredo Rangel told Reuters.

Colombia's war against traffickers has benefited from several billion dollars worth of aid from Washington, a sum that has so far dwarfed U.S. pledges to Mexico to help tackle the drug trade made under the so-called Merida Initiative.

PRI lawmaker Cerda said the $1.4 billion Washington had offered would not change Mexico, which is not short of cash and has a lower debt burden than Colombia and the United States. Mexico needed to take matters into its own hands, he said.

"The Merida initiative is an expression of good will from the Americans that we're grateful for, but it in absolute terms it's not going to achieve much," Cerda said.

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Video of a Convoy from the Knights Templar in Michoacán

The following video appears to have been made in Apatzingan, Michoacan, where you can see a convoy of Los Caballeros Templarios or the Knights Templar.

At least 50 trucks pass through the town and appear to be occupied by heavily armed men and some of the vehicles have the logo on the side of the criminal organization.

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Leyzaola Challenges the Members of the Sinaloa Cartel

Julián Leyzaola Pérez, the chief of the Municipal Public Security of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, made some strong statements after learning about the arrest of the four gunmen who executed José Manuel Rivas, the police coordinator of the Municipal Police station Benito Juárez.

The chief said he is extremely angry about what happened, "let them threaten me those dogs sons of bitches" (Que me amenacen a mí esos perros hijos de la chingada), he said while challenging the members of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Also in the last days Leyzaola has worked from the station Benito Juárez, after police officers said that they were afraid to work on this particular police station.

Leyzaola said there is no doubt in his mind that his police agency still has bad cops working for organize crime, "That makes us vulnerable to any attack, we cannot have corrupt people in the Police and soon I will fire them."

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Druglord 'El Chapo' Moves Operations to Argentina: Reports

Reports that Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman lived in Argentina until March 2011 have sparked new speculation about the fugitive capo’s whereabouts.

Written by Patrick Corcoran
In Sight

Quoting an anonymous source in the Argentine government, Noticias Argentinas said that Guzman began living in the country with his wife and stepdaughter in 2010. The fugitive only moved on early this year after being alerted that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was pursuing an arrest order, according to the report, traveling to Paraguay, Colombia, and then Europe.

“It is believed that he used a new false identity,” the official said. “But this we can say, there are registers of his wife and stepdaughter leaving Argentina in March of this year.”

The allegation, which has not been independently confirmed, conflicts with the image of Guzman holed up in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains, protected by loyal gunmen and friendly locals. Reports of the Sinaloa kingpin going abroad have emerged periodically, but never to the extent of the latest story, which has him traveling from country to country with his family.

However, because of the pressure at home from the Calderon government’s ongoing campaign against organized crime, many Mexican gangs have shifted portions of their operations abroad. Perhaps the biggest example of this is the Zetas’ growing role in Guatemala, but Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel has been detected as far away as Malaysia and Australia. And with a number of the most notorious Mexican gangsters arrested or killed by the government in the past 18 months, it is also not inconceivable that Mexican capos would think it a safer option to take refuge outside of the country.

If so, this would mirror the pattern set by Colombian drug traffickers. Because of the improved capacity of the Colombian authorities, many capos, who a generation ago would have operated unmolested in Cali, Bogota, and Medellin, have found it more practical to operate abroad. As a result, instances of Colombians being arrested on drug charges in other regions of South America or in Mexico have become more common.

In one famous Argentine example, Hector Edilson Duque Ceballos, alias "El Monoteto," was shot to death along with a colleague in a Buenos Aires parking lot in 2008. Duque Ceballos had been one of the highest-ranking members of Colombia's Cordillera Cartel.

Mexican drug lords also have a long history in Argentina, dating back to former Juarez capo Amado Carrillo’s plans to move there in the 1990s. According to Proceso, Guzman had been building his presence in the South American nation since at least 2007, using a series of evangelical churches as fronts for his organization.

Other Mexican groups have followed Guzman into Argentina. According to Edgardo Buscaglia, a researcher with the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, members of the Tijuana Cartel are working with Guzman’s people in the country. Authorities have also uncovered evidence of the Zetas operating there, though not in tandem with Guzman.

Guzman’s work in Argentina centers primarily on the production and distribution of synthetic drugs, according to the Proceso report. This is concentrated in three poor northern provinces: Chaco, Formosa, and Misiones. As a result, Guzman’s group has easy access to Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay, including the notoriously lawless tri-border area that Argentina shares with the latter two nations. Guzman has also allegedly invested significant amounts of money in some of the largest cities in Argentina, such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba, and Santa Fe.

The appeal of Argentina for drug syndicates is rooted in a number of factors. With its long coastline and busy port system, Argentina is a valuable source of important precursor chemicals for synthetic drugs from Asia. The relative weakness of state institutions in much of its territory means that capos have little trouble in corrupting officials. Guzman, for example, was reportedly tipped off about the DEA order by a collaborator in the Argentine government. Furthermore, with more than 40 million citizens, the country also provides a significant retail market for drugs.

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Too Big to Do Time?: Fed Wrist-slap for Wachovia Bank Makes a Farce of the Drug War

By:

Linn Washington Jr.

The U.S. government won convictions against 23,506 drug traffickers nationwide during 2010, sending 96 percent of the offenders to prison, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics.

Yet one of the biggest entities busted by the feds for involvement in drug trafficking last year received just a wrist-slap deal from federal prosecutors with nobody getting prison time.

During 2010, the U.S. government also won convictions against 806 persons involved in smaller-time drug-related money laundering, sending nearly 77 percent of those offenders to prison.

Yet when it came to a case involving billions of dollars in illegal drug profits, the federal government gave the same unusual wrist-slap to the same entity caught giving greed-blinded assistance to Mexican drug cartels by laundering billions of dollars in illegal profits for them.

So, what is this entity that federal prosecutors found worthy of big breaks for its laundering of billions of dollars, and for its blatant facilitating or tons of smuggled cocaine?

Meet Wachovia – once the nation’s sixth largest bank by assets and now a part of Wells Fargo Bank… a too-big-to-fail bank that for the feds is apparently too-big-to jail.

Wachovia recently completed what amounted to a year-long probation arising from a March 2010 settlement deal with federal prosecutors who were pursuing criminal proceedings against Wachovia for its facilitating of illegal money transfers from Mexico totaling $378-billion…a staggering sum greater than half of the Pentagon's annual budget, which included billions of dollars traced directly to violent Mexican drug cartels.

The record $160-million fine slapped on Wachovia under terms of that settlement deal included a $50-million assessment for failing to monitor cash used to ship into the US 22 tons of cocaine. (That fine amounted to less than two percent of Wachovia's profits during the prior year.)

Wells Fargo now owns Wachovia. Wells Fargo, federal prosecutors stress, was not involvement in the misdeeds that landed Wachovia in court, where it received a deferred prosecution deal.

Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia in early 2009 for $12.7-billion, shortly after Wells Fargo had received $25-billion in federal bail-out funds from the TARP program. That purchase helped make Wells Fargo America’s second-largest bank.

Many condemn the federal government settlement with Wachovia as a farce.

Criticism has come from persons in law enforcement frustrated by big-bank involvement in laundering drug money and from those who claim federal drug enforcement practices provide bigger breaks to drug kingpins than to low-level operators.

“All the law enforcement people wanted to see this come to trial. But no one goes to jail,” said Martin Woods, an English expert on anti-money laundering, whose work while with Wachovia’s London office helped unravel the drug connections. Woods says Wachovia officials bashed him for his investigative diligence and whistle-blowing as an employee.

“It’s simple: it you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point,” Woods said in an April 3, 2011 article published in The Observer, a British newspaper published on Sundays.

Wachovia’s involvement in big-time money laundering paralleled the period of a murderous escalation in violence in Mexico’s Drug War that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 Mexicans since 2006 alone, with the dead including politicians, prosecutors, police, soldiers, drug gang members and innocent bystanders.

During the same month last year when federal prosecutors gave Wachovia a break, finding no need to imprison any bank personnel for their involvement in massive drug-tainted money laundering, other federal prosecutors were pounding domestic drug dealers with long prison sentences.

For example, an Anchorage, Alaska man received a ten-year term for selling four ounces of crack cocaine, while an East St. Louis, Ill. businessman received a life sentence plus a $2.25-million fine for distributing three thousand pounds of cocaine between 2004 and his arrest in April 2008.

The amount of cocaine trafficking that sent the Illinois man to prison for life – one and a half tons - was much smaller than that single 22 ton cocaine shipment referenced in the Wachovia settlement document.

The settlement agreement Wachovia officials signed with federal prosecutors in Miami last year clearly stated that the bank knew that many of the transactions with Mexican financial institutions from 2004 to 2007 carried the stench of drugs.

That settlement agreement stated in part that as early as “2005 Wachovia was aware that other large US banks were exiting the [Mexican] business based on [anti-money laundering] concerns…Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in business” according to news media reports.

One reason Wachovia stayed in the business as others pulled out is that the bank reaped hefty fees from that money-laundering "business," in which billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveler’s checks and bulk cash shipments went into Wachovia accounts from Mexican exchange facilities called casa de cambios (CDCs).

Jeffery Solman, the federal prosecutor who handled the Wachovia case, stated last year that “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations.”

Last year Bloomberg News, in an article on the Wachovia money laundering scandal, reported how the federal government cited other mega-financial institutions in the U.S. like American Express Bank International and Bank of America for their complicity in laundering drug money.

Making a farce out of the nation's supposed War on Drugs, none of the mega-financial institutions identified by federal authorities as having been involved with laundering drug money and none of the well-paid individuals at those institutions which were facilitating that laundering has faced go-to-jail federal criminal prosecutions like those targeting small fry in the drug trade.

Days after Wachovia received its wrist-slap deal for laundering billions of dollars in drug money, federal prosecutors secured a five-year sentence for a 26-year-old Johnstown, Pa. man involved with a drug ring it claimed was responsible for $10,000 in drug sales per month.

Imprisoning that Johnstown street dealer for five years will cost taxpayers $113,115, based on the average cost of $22,623 annually to house a federal prisoner. He was one of six people netted during a drug crackdown in that small former steel town located in the mountains 66 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Alarming evidence of the Drug War farce – the prosecutorial pounding of small fry while major players get a pass – is evident in statistics from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the federal agency that advises Congress on criminal sentencing matters.

During 2009, in the Southern Florida district where Miami is located, 96.1 percent of the 669 persons convicted in federal courts for drug trafficking received prison time. Twenty-percent of the persons convicted in Southern Florida federal courts for simply possessing drugs received prison time.

Of the 67 persons convicted of money laundering during 2009 in those same Southern Florida courts, 77.6% went to prison, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics.

As noted in that April 2011 article in The Observer, the conclusion of the Wachovia case “was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the “legal” banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.”

That Observer article included observations made in 2008 by the then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime providing evidence suggesting that drug/crime money was “the only liquid investment capital” available to banks on the brink of collapse.

“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drug trade,” the Observer article quoted the U.N. official as stating. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”

The June 2010 Bloomberg News article provided an ominous observation about the wrist-slap protection large banks receive from criminal indictments due to a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory:

“Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets," says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering. The theory is like a get-out-of-jail free card for big banks, Blum says.

Another anti-money laundering expert disappointed with the federal government’s settlement with Wachovia is Robert Mazur, identified in the Observer article as one of the world’s “foremost figures” in providing anti-money laundering training and the point-man for US law enforcement during prosecutions against Columbian drug cartels two decades ago.

Mazur told The Observer, “The only thing that will make the banks properly vigilant to what is happening is when they hear the rattle of handcuffs in the boardroom.”

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What Mexico Will Look Like in 2012?

By Louis E.V. Nevaer
New America Media

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets in peaceful marches in scores of cities calling for an end to President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs.

The protests reflect growing dissatisfaction among the public with Calderón’s drug war that has exacerbated rather than curtailed narco-violence.

This sentiment has been echoed by journalists as well. Jorge Ramos, the lead news anchor for Univision, has gone on record as saying, “Calderón’s strategy [against the drug cartels], which has cost more than 34,000 lives in the last four years, has been an utter failure.”

A failure to stem the violence has catapulted public safety to the top of the list of voters’ concerns ahead of next year’s elections in Mexico, trumping even the economy.Calderón will be termed out, but there is mounting pressure for would-be presidential hopefuls to declare that, if elected, they would call off the war on drugs.

But as 2012 nears, does Mexico have a choice?

It does not.

Is Calderón’s drug war working?

It’s one thing to criticize the war on drugs and another to offer a viable solution. To his credit, Calderón has recognized errors in his campaign against the drug cartels, and, of even more significance, he has, time and again, invited anyone anywhere to offer a viable alternative.

This modesty has been acknowledged by critics. Writing in Milenio newspaper, Hector Aguilar conceded that, “there is nobody proposing an alternative to Calderón's strategy."

By contrast, there are many who compare Mexico’s current campaign with that of Colombia’s more than a decade ago, and are optimistic. Mexican and U.S. officials, for instance, argue that Calderón’s policies are proving effective, as measured in drugs seized, money confiscated, drug lords arrested or slain and the constant disruption to the cartels’ organizations that has forced them to set up operations in the United States, Central America and as far away as Malaysia and West Africa.

This is how Katherine Corcoran of the Associated Press summed up the situation last month: “Mexican drug cartels now operate virtually uninhibited in their Central American backyard. U.S.-supported crackdowns in Mexico and Colombia have only pushed traffickers into a region where corruption is rampant, borders lack even minimal immigration control and local gangs provide a ready-made infrastructure for organized crime.” The price of this “success” has been, as Ramos points out with anguish -- violence.

But as Mexicans begin to think about next year’s elections, there is the sobering reality that no matter who is elected president, the war on drugs may be tweaked, but it won’t be abandoned.

Mexico pivotal to global drug trade

Why? Because in an increasingly interdependent world, Mexico has obligations to the international community to participate fully in stopping the global drug trade.

More importantly, Mexico has the United States as a neighbor – which is both the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs, and a militaristic nation that, with impunity, takes actions against nations it deems a national security threat.

Quite simply, regardless of the sentiments of poets and journalists – and everyday citizens who march peacefully through the streets of Mexican cities – the government has no choice in the matter.

There are two fundamental reasons why Mexico’s next president will stay the course.

Foremost is the matter of national sovereignty. It is unthinkable for Mexico to establish a quid pro quo, where the military’s campaign stops and the cartels cease their violence. The idea of having the Mexican state co-exist with nebulous geographic regions under the control of organized criminal syndicates is not in the cards. The last time Mexico relinquished jurisdiction over its geography, it emboldened foreign settlers to establish a breakaway republic – the Republic of Texas.

In more practical terms, should Mexico’s next president want to reach an agreement in which there were no more kidnappings, in return for the army returning to their barracks, with whom would he negotiate? Most of the “most wanted” drug lords are dead, have been arrested, sent to the United States for trial, or have fled Mexico and set up shop in other countries.

Secondly, what would happen if in 2012, Mexico decided to turn a blind eye and allow cartels to operate with impunity in the northern states, in exchange for an end to kidnappings, shootouts and violence?

U.S. won’t stand for rogue state

The United States wouldn’t stand for a rogue state to coexist alongside Mexico’s legitimate government. The United States launches cruise missiles into the Sudan, occupies Iraq, and initiates war in Afghanistan. In addition, since 2001 financial laws have changed around the world – in a desperate bid to stop the flow of narco-dollars into the global banking system. All one has to do is recall that last March, Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo, settled the biggest action brought under the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and "deferred prosecution" by paying federal authorities $110 million in forfeitures. The DEA and IRS accused Wachovia of laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels.

If federal officials are this relentless in prosecuting American corporations linked with drug traffickers, think of the retaliatory actions that the U.S. government would pursue should it conclude that Mexico represents a “national security threat.” In other words, if Mexico’s next president abandons Calderón’s drug war, as Ramos suggests, then Mexico could easily be declared a “rogue state” that threatens the “national security interests” of the United States, always a precursor to economic and military actions.

In the best-case scenario, Mexico would then be subjected to financial havoc as American authorities move to seize bank accounts used by the drug cartels to launder their money, paralyzing Mexico’s financial system. In a worst-case scenario, Mexico may itself be occupied militarily by the United States.

No one in Mexico likes waking up to horrible news about violence, slayings and the relentless viciousness that’s going on every day. Then again, I suspect everyone in the United States is tired of waking up and hearing about Guantanamo detainees, car bombs in Iraq and the never-ending pursuit of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Indeed, critics like Ramos are naïvely offering an absurd alternative: That Mexico pursue a policy that will surrender its sovereignty to rogue criminal organizations, force the United States to declare it a rogue nation that threatens its national security interests, subject Mexico to economic sanctions and the possibility of being occupied (once more) by the United States. In the same way that Barack Obama has found it impossible to close down Guantanamo, so will Mexico’s next president find it impossible to end the war on drugs.

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