For the current North American government, drug traffickers are not common criminals but terrorists fully comparable to the most fanatical Islamists who want to draw attention to the extreme savagery that characterizes them, which is why Donald Trump believes that the United States has the right to persecute them anywhere in the world without taking into account the sovereignty of the countries in which they are located.
In 2011, then-President Barack Obama ordered US special forces to kill Islamist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the mastermind behind the devastating attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington in which three thousand people died. Trump recently used the same logic to justify the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. However, he cared less about the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Maduro because it was a matter of an “internal matter” than his alleged role in the export of cocaine and other drugs to North American territory. Furthermore, the US military has not hesitated to sink vessels that, according to them, were bringing drugs to the United States, without worrying about the legal details or the possibility that the fatal victims of their attacks were innocent fishermen.
Despite threatening to do so, the United States has refrained from making a military incursion into Mexico, but no one ignores that the superpower’s intelligence services actively collaborate with the authorities of the neighboring country. Last week, its agents helped put an end to the criminal career of Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho” who, experts in this matter say, had become the most feared drug trafficker on the planet, by providing key information to the Mexican authorities who were in charge of dealing him the final blow.
Enraged by what happened, the soldiers of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel of El Mencho reacted like political militants, blocking streets, setting cars and buses on fire and frontally attacking the security forces with the obvious purpose of warning President Claudia Sheinbaum that it would be in her best interest to allow them to continue with their business which, due to the size it has reached, is among the largest on the planet.
If it were not for strong American pressure, the temptation to surreptitiously make agreements with the very rich and extremely violent cartels that are sowing terror in his country could be irresistible to Sheinbaum. This is what his predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did, who chose to treat drug traffickers as if they were political extremists who, in exchange for concessions, could be incorporated into the current system. Although the strategy thus assumed turned out to be counterproductive, attempts by previous governments to solve the problem by military means did not prosper either.
The drug traffickers may not have explicit political objectives, but if they have their way, Mexico would soon resemble Haiti where the State is effectively in the hands of criminal gangs. However, as Mexicans – and Brazilians, among others – learned long ago, the alternative, which is to wage a war of extermination against drug trafficking organizations, can have terrifying consequences not only for the authorities but also for the “civilian” population. For years, ordinary Mexicans, like the inhabitants of some countries in the Middle East and Africa, have been accustomed to seeing dozens of decapitated bodies in the street or hanging from bridges. For understandable reasons, trigger-happy cases have become routine among police and military personnel.
Will the very violent rebellion of El Mencho’s followers benefit the cartels? Given the circumstances, Sheinbaum will only feel obliged to redouble her efforts to crush the group of which she was the undisputed leader and the others who will surely try to take advantage of the death of her most dangerous enemy. Unless she does, the first woman to occupy the presidency of Mexico will appear too weak to combat the organized crime that is doing so much damage to her country.
It would also expose itself to the revenge of Trump who has made the fight to the death against the Mexican cartels one of his strategic priorities. According to the American boss, Latin American drug traffickers are mainly responsible for the addictions that cause the death of more than one hundred thousand people in their country every year. He is especially concerned about fentanyl, which is fifty times more powerful than heroin, which is usually manufactured in Mexico with ingredients imported from China, although it appears that the proportion of deaths attributable to the substance has recently decreased.
In any case, since the drug industry has reached its current dimensions thanks to the willingness of so many North Americans and Europeans to buy its products, for a lot of money, some insist that it would be better to combat it by legalizing the consumption of addictive drugs so that the market, faithful to the fluctuations of supply and demand, is responsible for mitigating the crisis. Would it help to treat it as a purely medical problem? Those opposed to such proposals point out that legitimizing consumption would only serve to make more people addicted for life, which would have a terribly negative impact on public health in the United States and other prosperous countries that already face serious problems in this area due to the inexorable aging of the population. Likewise, there is no doubt that drug addicts, even when receiving medical treatment, are more likely than others to commit violent crimes.
Although laws regarding narcotics possession have been relaxed in many jurisdictions in North America and Europe, it is unlikely that in major countries the war against cartels will be abandoned as counterproductive. In addition to causing countless personal tragedies, they make the societies they penetrate increasingly corrupt by buying off influential politicians, judges, civil servants, the military, and police.
On the one hand, drug traffickers are in a position to enrich those willing to collaborate, on the other, they can threaten the recalcitrant with killing them and taking revenge on their families. It is therefore understandable that in many parts of the world – including, of course, Argentina – the groups they have formed have been able to operate as shadow political parties that influence the decisions made by the authorities. Needless to say, in the cases of unexplained enrichment that continue to be processed in court, there is every reason to suspect that a significant proportion of the money involved came from drug organizations.
For many years it was taken for granted that Argentina was “a transit country” that cartels of foreign origin used to take their products to Europe but that, fortunately, it was not a very significant consumer market. It was an illusion. The challenge posed by drug trafficking here may be less fierce than that faced by other countries in the region, such as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and, of course, Mexico, but this does not mean that it is a merely marginal phenomenon. In the Buenos Aires suburbs, Rosario and elsewhere, crime is closely linked to the availability of cheap drugs like paco: reportedly, in many poor neighborhoods, dealers have replaced the political leaders of the past. It is understood: they can offer “job opportunities” to young people who otherwise would not be able to get money or a share of prestige in the eyes of their peers.
Mexicans have learned that trying to coexist with the cartels would be suicidal, but they also know that repressing them by force would mean tolerating measures that are hardly compatible with the rule of law in countries with Western traditions. Because the havoc that drug trafficking organizations are causing in some countries in the region is so disastrous, it is not surprising that those who demand a strong hand are attracted by the example provided by Nayib Bukele who, to defeat the gangs that before his arrival to the presidency were sowing terror in El Salvador, installed a very severe police state and saw his popularity index rise to the sky. According to some recent polls, 85 percent of his compatriots approve of his management.
In Mexico, Sheinbaum and many others pray that the outbreak of drug violence that followed El Mencho’s death will soon die down and that internal conflicts within the Jalisco cartel and its equally bloodthirsty rivals will weaken them to the point that authorities can dismantle them and imprison their members. Unless something like this happens, Mexican democracy, like that of other countries in the region, will run the risk of suffering a fate similar to that of El Salvador. To win the war against criminal violence, Bukele’s democratically elected regime became so authoritarian that it looks more like a plebiscite military dictatorship than a government based on the rule of law.
