Calderón Cracks Down on Drug Cartels

Via usnews.com -

Is Mexico getting serious about cracking down on its out-of-control drug trade? Its new president, Felipe Calderón, may be the right guy at the right time. Along with dispatching military and elite police units to battle the gangs, last weekend his government–in an unprecedented move–extradited 15 of "the world's most violent and ruthless criminals," as U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Karen Tandy put it.

Tandy isn't exaggerating, investigators tell me. The Mexican group including reputed leaders from that country's top four drug syndicates: the Juarez cartel, the Gulf cartel, the Federation, and the Arellano-Felix organization. These groups rank among the world's most formidable criminal organizations. Together, they move most of the dope pouring into the United States–the world's largest market for illicit drugs–and it has made them rich, hyperviolent, and powerful. Mexican drug cartels smuggle nearly 90 percent of America's cocaine, along with much of its heroin and methamphetamine.

Give Calderón some credit. The man is not simply doing Washington's bidding; he's trying to save his own country. The drug trade's cost to Mexico has been huge, with thousands of deaths, mob rule, and massive corruption. One sign of the times: Last year, Mexico passed Colombia as the second-deadliest country for journalists, behind only Iraq.

How bad is it?

"In Mexico, journalists who cover the drug wars–wars, literally, between the state and the cartels and between the cartels themselves–have become expendable," writes my colleague Pedro Armendares, director of Mexico's Centro de Periodistas de Investigación (Center for Investigative Journalism). "There is total impunity for the attacks. Too many regular folks have come to regard the death or disappearance of a reporter who covers drug trafficking almost as a normal event, just one more statistic along with the number of bad guys captured or kilos of cocaine seized."

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See this other usanews blog about all the money that is leaving the nation over the southern & Northern borders.