Drugs, terror and the militarization of Mexican society

Washington is 'Arming' Mexico's Intelligence with Advanced Intercept Technologies
By Tom Burghardt
No pasa un día sin que los periódicos españoles informen de la aparición de cadáveres mutilados en ciudades y pueblos del norte de México. La lucha entre bandas de narcotraficantes ha conducido al país azteca a una crisis permanente de la que al parecer, en opinión del articulista Tom Burghardt, la principal consecuencia es la militarización de la sociedad mexicana.

(Global Research, May 14, 2012)


URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30833


Amid recent reports that the bodies of four Mexican journalists were discovered in a canal in the port city of Veracruz, less than a week after another journalist based in that city was found strangled in her home, the U.S. State Department "plans to award a contract to provide a Mexican government security agency with a system that can intercept and analyze information from all types of communications systems," NextGov reported.
The most glaring and obvious question is: why?
Since President Felipe Calderón declared "war" against some of the region's murderous drug cartels in 2006, some 50,000 Mexicans have been butchered. Activists, journalists, honest law enforcement officials but also ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire, the vast majority of victims, have been the targets of mafia-controlled death squads, corrupt police and the military.


Underscoring the savage nature of another "just war" funded by U.S. taxpayers, last week The Dallas Morning News reported that "23 people were found dead Friday--nine hanging from a bridge and 14 decapitated--across the Texas border in the city of Nuevo Laredo."


The arcane and highly-ritualized character of the violence, often accompanied by sardonic touches meant to instill fear amongst people already ground underfoot by crushing poverty and official corruption that would make the Borgias blush, convey an unmistakable message: "We rule here!"


"The latest massacres are part of a continuing battle between the paramilitary group known as the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel," the Morning News averred. "The violence appears to be part of a strategy by the Sinaloa cartel to disrupt one of the most lucrative routes for drug smugglers by bringing increased attention from the federal government."


According to investigators the "two warring cartels are fighting for control of the corridor that leads into Interstate 35, known as one of the most lucrative routes for smugglers."


But as Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Program pointed out last month in CounterPunch, "In a series of 'Joint Operations' between Federal Police and Armed Forces, the Mexican government has deployed more than 45,000 troops into various regions of the country in an unprecedented domestic low-intensity conflict."


The militarization of Mexican society, as in the "Colossus to the North," has also seen the expansion of a bloated Surveillance State. Carlsen averred that when the Army and Federal Police are "deployed to communities where civilians are defined as suspected enemies, soldiers and officers have responded too often with arbitrary arrests, personal agendas and corruption, extrajudicial executions, the use of torture, and excessive use of force." (continúa en Global Research).