As the Obama administration gathers accolades coming their way for taking out Osama Bin Laden, time may be ripe to turn the spotlight on an issue much closer to home—addressing the urgent threat across the border to bring an end to the cycle of violence that plagues Mexico.
Drug cartels have spawned a well-structured crime syndicate in Mexico, fuelled by the enormous demand for narcotics from America. The Mexican government is struggling to dent the rapidly growing reach of the cartels.
George Grayson, an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute says there is no magical solution to this complicated problem. “We don’t have any silver bullets,” he says. “I only see this problem getting worse.”
The enormous fangs of the Zetas gang in particular are playing a major role in Mexico hurtling toward instability.
The group initially made up of Mexican military deserters offered their services as bodyguards for the powerful Gulf cartel. But over time, they have grown out independently and established a fierce reputation.
“The Zetas have obviously assumed the role of being the No. 1,” said Ralph Reyes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s chief for Mexico and Central America. This assessment of his was made 18 months back and since then the gang has only grown more powerful.
Zetas are suspected of being responsible for killing and beheading 27 migrant farmers in the Peten region of Guatemala earlier this month. The killers then proceeded to writing warning messages on the wall from the pool of blood of their victims.
Grayson says, “They want to burnish their reputation as the most savage group.”
But the most pressing threat for America is the way they have been preying on Central American migrants making the trek across Mexico to get to the United States. They have devised a simple three-point plan to target the migrants they catch along the way, say Grayson.
The first option is to pseudo-recruit the migrants. Increasingly, the gang is picking on men trying to cross over into America as the couriers for their drug packets. But it doesn’t end there. They make sure to track down the families of their victims and use them as guarantees to ensure the drug is delivered to the intended destination.
The second option, and indicative of their diversification into new lines of criminal activities, is to simply kidnap the migrants and demand money, estimated to be anywhere between $1,000-5,000, to release them.
The last and most chilling is to kill their victims, a method they have not been shy of implementing in the recent past.
But they have taken care to avoid killing Americans. Grayson insists it is a practical decision and not based out of any benevolence. “They don’t want to see American boots in Mexico,” he says.
If that is the intention then it has worked.
While America continues to be a major source of guns for most of the gangs and its biggest market for narcotics trafficking, sending in American troops to root out the menace has not been considered a viable proposition yet.
“I don’t see what we can do besides diminishing the demand for drugs,” Grayson says. “The real solution lies with Mexico.”
