Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers (book)

The online edition of The Observer, a UK Sunday newspaper, has a lengthy piece entitled
'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'
to introduce an extract from the book "Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers" by Anabel Hernández, journalist and author who, in the book, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the 'war on drugs' is a sham.
http://www.theguardian.com/...-hernandez-narcoland

The online edition of The Observer, a UK Sunday newspaper, has a lengthy piece entitled
'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'
to introduce an extract from the book "Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers" by Anabel Hernández, journalist and author who, in the book, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the 'war on drugs' is a sham.
http://www.theguardian.com/...-hernandez-narcoland

Headless dogs, come on. These guys are serious bad boys. They are not going to try a capture street dogs and leave them headless as a message. And they are not going to use their dogs, mexicans love dogs.

In Reply To

You never know Sam,not all Mexicans love dogs and besides dogs weren't mentioned in the article,just animals.

Well Sam, everyone has an opinion and some carry more weight according to the credibility of the poster. What credentials do you possess that will convince readers of this forum that your opinions on the subject are indeed valid?

In Reply To

Stop it Bennie. My opinions on the subject are indeed valid because they are my opinions.
What credentials are required to express my opinions? How much weight a reader cares to credit my opinion is up the the individual reader.

In Reply To

No Sam, opinions aren't valid simply because they are expressed. Does your opinion, based on your experience living in Mexico for a few years hold more validity than that of someone who spent a weekend getting drunk in a border town?

But its true, each reader will credit an opinion as they see fit. No argument there.

Yucalandia, it's the latter--a set of very troubling facts reported in unusually lurid terms. You live fairly far from the action in the spurious drug war, so you probably don't see much of what's going on in the country. Those of us who live in the central highlands have seen--and continue to see--a good bit more of the disaster that has befallen Mexico. And if you want to call 'disaster that has befallen Mexico' another instance of lurid terms, so be it. Suffice it to say that the newspaper El Universal reported this week that applications in Mexico for political amnesty visas to the USA have gone from 4,000 and some in 2012 to over 14,000 so far in 2013--applications from people who have been personally affected by murder and threats of murders, extortion and threats of extortion in the so-called 'drug war'. If I can find a link to the article, I'll post it here.

Is Capitalism the root of the problem?
Is Government the root of the problem?
steve

In Reply To

Steve,when you ask questions like these or questions like"Who are Mexicans?"or"What does it mean to be Mexican?"etc. are you really seeking answers to those questions from the forum members?

Good point.

There are a lot of answers that added facets I never imagined on the "Who are Mexicans". Citali, Richmx2, La Isla, Norteño, geezer56 and mcm added some good stuff. There were a number of personally inappropriate posts that moderators deleted, that leave readers with only a partial picture.

Returning to this thread's topic: I have trouble seeing the current direct linkage or a broad existence of "mafiocracy" between the Mex. Federal government and the narco cartels. In a connect-the-dots exercise, the authors connect dots in ways that fit their personal preconceptions to create images that fit their intents.

Deciding to not aggressively pursue criminals does not mean the the government is directly causing the crime. Prostitution has been around as long as governments and religions have forbidden it. Since the police do not chase down every prostitute and prosecute every john, does it mean that the government supports and works in concert to promote prostitution? Individual instances of corruption do not in and of themselves prove that the whole system is corrupt.

Is Capitalism the problem, as posited in the article? A weak non-independent judiciary seems like a bigger cause. The absence of a well funded, well trained, independent, and fully staffed prosecutorial branch of law enforcement seems like a bigger cause of the problems. Based on the bits of the book and article promoted here, I think that "Two Countries Indivisible" offers much better, clearly broader, and more realistic analyses of the problems and practical solutions.

Its hard to solve a problem, and hard to move towards solutions, when we miss major issues and mischaracterize other essential issues. This is similar to trying to understand the course of a thread, and make after-the-fact judgements of people's actions, when key pieces have been deleted - especially when the deletions were/are fully appropriate.
steve

Sorry Bennie for intruding on your space. I always thought opinions were just that, opinions. Now stating something as fact where it is, in fact, opinion, is a whole different story, right?
since you feel I need to validate my existence here, I will say that I have lived full time in Mexico for xx years. Any other rules I need to fill to satisfy your requirements?