In fact, today, fighting the cartels is to Mexico what corruption is to Kenya: deeply entrenched, too sly to slay, costs political careers and forms fodder for political discourse.
By Eric Wamanji
His sounds like an extract from a horrific underworld movie: He grabbed his victims and dipped them in barrels of acid to dissolve. This account is one of the most bizarre and chilling that recently jutted in the senselessly doped drugs world of Mexico.
But 45 year old Santiago Meza Lopez, the man behind the macabre act, was finally nabbed by the country’s military. To his name, 300 bodies were liquefied in the past 10 years, he confessed.
Meza was acting under instruction of drug baron, Eduardo Garcia Simental. These corpses were in Lopez’s words “the products of the drug war, enemies or debtors of Simental.”
The bodies would be left for 24 hours in barrels of highly corrosive caustic soda then disappear. Those stubborn to dissolve would be buried in unmarked graves. After a good a day’s job, Lopez would comfortably walk away, a cigarette on his lips, one hand in the pocket toward a bar for tequila as if nothing had happened. These confessions spelt a chill down the spine of the Mexican region even though cartel feuding and obnoxious deaths define the lifestyle there.
Mexico has tens of drugs gangs and cartels that are involved in a vicious inter and intra fighting to control prime drugs smuggling routes and territories. In this mix, the police too are a prime target of the headline grabbing mafia-like outfits.
Lopez earned the name “Stew-maker,” after a local stew in his country and he used to say “call me Stew,” Mexican press reports.
“They brought me the bodies, about 300 over the last nine to 10 years…I ask for forgiveness from the families of the victims,” press reports quoted Lopez as pleading
And for this “little good work,” Lopez looped a staggering $ 600 (Ksh. 46, 800) every week. He was on FBI’s most wanted list.
Mexico is a hub of drugs wheeling and dealing and it harbors some of the most influential and wealthy drug lords on earth. But according to Mexican statues, drugs “poisons the individual and degenerates the (Mexican) race.”
Here, it is safer if you avoided the arteries of drug merchants. Kidnappings are a daily past time. Victims are beheaded and their bodies hung in strategic places with warning inscriptions. The macabre executions and lawlessness is so high such that it is even feared that the country is staggering to the abyss of a civil war and thus a failed state.
Last year alone, over 5,000 people were executed, gangland style, in what authorities say is a product of the elusive drugs underworld rivalry. Naturally, the security forces are too under siege. And fighting drugs is the toughest and riskiest beat in Mexico.
Neatly organized
Most traded drugs include cocaine, heroine and marijuana in a multi-billion dollar industry that has refused to be smoked out. And the gangs are powerful. Their tentacles have spiraled in all parts of the country mainly the US-Mexico border including security apparatuses and the church.
And so elite are they in the enterprise that the cartels know when and how to employ propaganda. For instance, they have even commissioned music production known as corridos that glorifies drugs, drug lords, drug taking and drug dealings. Furthermore, the gangs are well trained, and equipped with a strong intelligence system that baffles the wit out of Mexico’s security systems.
And the cartels are a sophisticated lot with intricate and elaborate distribution networks, intense intelligence, and manipulative power. With top of the range weaponry eliminating them seems a frustrating enterprise for the government. They have even secured the trust and support of some law enforcers who supply intelligence and protection at a fee.
This is how the Los Angels Times captures the Mexican Drug Curse: “Drug traffickers finance politicians, and politicians protect drug traffickers. Judges take bribes. Unregulated financial institutions make it easy to launder money. A weak, ill-trained, underpaid police force is easily infiltrated. And most important, Mexico’s economic structure thwarts growth and social mobility, forcing Mexicans to either cross the border for a better life or to join the narco-culture.”
That is why, at one time last year, press reports show that top placed bureaucrats at the Public Security Ministry faced the jury – they were protecting the drugs mandarins. This explains the desperate need for intelligence sharing in the counter narcotics stratagem between the US and Mexican authorities.
In Ciudad Juarez, the city’s main drug-smuggling group, known as the Juarez Cartel, is battling with rival traffickers from the northwestern state of Sinaloa, (where it all began in the eighteenth century) for a piece of the lucrative drug trade into the U.S. at times these gang wars used to spill to the streets. So bad is the situation here such that the army has been deployed to help crush this seemingly hydra-like syndicate.
For instance, in Ciudad Juarez, gang clashes are commonplace. The two deadly ones are Aztecas and Mexcles which are said to be on a coalition course most of the time. Other cartels are the Juarez, Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels and are said to be highly influential.
And in all this, Mexicans blame the US. Most of the weapons come from the North, Mexicans say. The largest drug market is also in US. But the Mexicans are accused of failure to smash the drug ring.
And these noxious drugs are in tones. For instance, last year, reports show that over 24 tons of cocaine was intercepted and 2, 900 tons of marijuana. Drugs seized so far last year is roughly valued at a dizzying figure of $ 20 billion.
With such mind boggling opulence, it explains why the mandarins have the nerve to even advertise to offer jobs to ex-force officers and promising princely pay and perks.
This gangland violence has gripped the country like a vice on a piece of metal. People live in fear, uncertainty. Who would be the next victim, even innocently caught in the crossfire, is not known. Here death lingers over like a sickening perfume.
That is why, former US president George Bush conceived the Merida Initiative where his country funds Mexico to the tune of $400 million (Ksh. 31.2 billion) yearly to tame luxuriant drugs enterprise.
Commentators in the US even believe that trying to fight the Mexican drugs syndicate should be top in President Barrack Obama’s foreign affairs notes.
It is feared that the cartels intent to destabilizing the state or anyone who poses a threat to their dealings. If Mexco fails, and that is the mandarins’ crave, America will definitely bare the brunt of it all: more refugees will surge through its borders, more crime and more drugs.
In fact the US army is worried. It sees a possibility that Mexco is headed to a failed state. And what America fears most is the possibility of a civil war.
“Two large and important states bear consideration for rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico,” reads a report from the US army.
“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.”
Indeed, even the Vatican has been jostled by the drug dealings of Mexico. Recently, according to a dispatch from the holly see, Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said to be the second in command after the pope, demanded for a “deterrent” to the chilling deaths and violence that happily visits Mexico.
He roots for the excommunication of the drugs lords. He described them as “the most hypocritical and terrible way of murdering the dignity and personality of today’s youth.” But the barons know their act. They have even infiltrated the church where they generously share their small fortunes, perhaps to launder their consciousness.
So advanced is the syndicate that it has evolved a distinct culture known as “narco-culture” and heavily uses superstition and Catholicism. In this world, they have their own values, strict rules and even mythologies. They even have a saint of narco- traffickers, and who is highly feared – Jesus Malverde.
So serious is the issue of drugs in this country that a special drug bursting squad of some 36, 000 police officers and the military has been created to tackle the problem.
In fact, Mexico president Philipe Calderon is a worried man. He has been accused of doing little to end the hell that is his country’s drug syndicate. In fact, today, fighting the cartels is to Mexico what corruption is to Kenya: deeply entrenched, embedded to political power, too sly to slay, costs political careers and forms fodder for political mileage. Mexico has a population of 110 million people.
Mexico is strategically placed as the drug conduit between the south Americas, especially Colombia, where drugs is grown and the North America its consumption point. The arrest of Lopez, though emblematic, has not stirred the drugs world; perhaps a rosary to the Virgin Mary would help Mexico.
Additional sources: internet