The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America by Ted Galen Carpenter

Author:Ted Galen Carpenter [Carpenter, Ted Galen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Public Policy, Criminology, Military, Social Science, Political Science, History, General
ISBN: 9781937184551
Google: UYOQAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17050774
Publisher: Cato Institute
Published: 2012-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

7. Mexico’s Corruption and Violence: A Threat to Americans?

Mexico’s drug-related corruption and violence are no longer a tragedy just for that country. Increasingly, those developments are posing worries for the United States. The extent of the problem at this point is the subject of debate, but there is no doubt that U.S. officials are deeply concerned about the danger of a “spillover” effect. Following a major nationwide anti-drug raid in June 2010, Kevin L. Perkins, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, told reporters that “drug trafficking across the U.S. southwest border” was not only leading to a “surge of drugs in our neighborhoods across the country,” but was leading to “increased border violence, kidnapping, extortion and human smuggling.”1

The Growing Mexican Cartel Presence in the United States

The cartels are clearly expanding their operations north of the border, either directly or by forging ties with American affiliates. Some of that expansion is commercial in nature. For example, authorities have noticed that both the number and size of marijuana farms—mostly on public land in the national forests of California and other western states—have increased dramatically in the past few years.2 Indeed, some of the operations are now so large and sophisticated that police have begun to refer to them as “plantations” rather than farms, and there are indications that the Mexican cartels provide the financial resources and expertise for their development. Such enterprises often have a menacing quality about them. The plantations are continually guarded by armed personnel equipped with assault weapons, night-vision goggles, and sophisticated communications gear. Ominously, nearly half of the 487 pot farms that DEA and other authorities raided during one 12-month period were tended by foreign nationals, many of whom appeared to have ties to Mexican traffickers.3

Some of the raided plantations contained as may 75,000 plants, each with a potential yield of a pound of marijuana—more than 35 tons for the entire operation.4 From a business standpoint, setting up such vast operations makes sense. By growing the marijuana in the United States, traffickers are able to bypass a crucial component of the counter-drug strategy that the U.S. and Mexican governments use: intercepting drug shipments at the border. Instead, the crops are harvested on-site and then broken up into relatively small shipments to be distributed to cities around the United States. In essence, the drug gangs have emulated a model that foreign automobile manufacturers began to use more than a decade ago—setting up assembly plants in the United States instead of shipping cars from Japan or Europe, thereby being closer to the consumer market.

In addition to expanding their drug production operations, the cartels are enlarging their distribution networks in the United States.5 According to law enforcement authorities, Mexican drug organizations now have ties to criminal gangs in at least 230 American cities, including all of the 50 largest cities. The cartel presence now even extends to relatively small cities and, in some cases, to rural counties—and not just in the southwestern states, but portions of the South, the Midwest, and other regions.

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