Images Huffington Post
Juan “El Chapo” Guzman recently escaped prison. Again. Albeit not via the prison laundry service. There was little doubt that he had assistance leaving incarceration behind that first time back in 2001. There is no doubt he had ample assistance this time. The sophisticated network of tunnels running from his cell and beneath the facility, leading to his freedom, were not dug by a hacksaw and prison spoon.
This only underscores that corruption is endemic in Mexico. It exists at all levels of government; it is pervasive throughout the judicial system, and extends like tentacles through law enforcement and even the militia. All countries suffer corruption to varying degrees, but Mexico is an extreme case, and is rooted within a culture based on “Plato or plomo”: silver or lead. Because there is no rule of law – only the rule of Cartel crime and the fear they wield.
North American culture has glamourized organized crime. We’ve storified the Mafia, made the DirtyThirties the stuff of modern legend. We’ve even musically rendered the terrifying gang wars between Crips and Bloods. But we have nothing that compares to the absolute power and retribution wielded by the Cartels just south of the border. We have not lost innocent lives by the thousands. There are no hidden mass graves scattered across the nation, holding the bodies of those whose families will never know peace. Our reporters are free to cover the stories they choose, as they see fit, and to openly challenge those who make the rules without paying with their lives and the lives of their families. I write this piece because our ignorance has made us dangerously oblivious.
The border between Mexico and the rest of North America is nothing more than a line on a page. It exists as a symbolic demarcation, but it will not stem the flow of drugs north, nor the secreted caches of guns and cash south. Los Zetas, a horrifically violent cartel that claimed almost half of Mexico and rivalled the mighty Sinaloa Cartel led by Guzman, laundered their drug money in race horses up in the lush green pastures of Oklahoma (read more here). More recently, an uptick in violence in the province of Alberta, Canada revealed that cocaine and other drugs were being smuggled north by Mennonites (read more here ). Remember: plata o plomo. What would you do to keep those you love safe, if you knew the threat against them was very real? The reach of the Cartels has been vastly underestimated.
As turf wars turn ugly, and the most powerful cartels create alliances to turn on each other, it is the civilians who pay the price. The region of Monterrey, along the Gulf Coast, was a beacon of promise for Mexico’s economy. Universities. Culture. Manufacturing. Monterrey, in the north eastern state of Nuevo Leon, had everything to offer foreign investors and tourists. Except when it became the battleground between the Gulf Cartel and their spin-offs come rivals, Los Zetas. Los Zetas had been the security arm of the once mighty Gulf Cartel, and as such, they were highly-trained, paramilitary who functioned as a machine. When they decided it was time to become their own cartel, Nuevo Leon was awash in blood. Gun battles happened mid-day. People ran for cover. Families were terrified to send their children to school or go out. You could be caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time anytime. For those who dared cover the stories of what was going on, reprisals were deadly. Reporters were hunted down, gunned down in their place of work. Collateral damage was almost a way of life now.
And still, the world knew nothing. There were a few sources able to get the news out. Entire newspaper offices have been torched. To tell the truth comes at a very high price. Borderland Beat has done an ongoing excellent grass-roots coverage from within. El Blog del Narco covers stories of the drug trade there. Daniel Hernandez of Vice News has been delving right into the gritty heart of the matter. But the norm are stories we don’t here, like that of reporter Stephania Cardosa and her young son, who had to disappear for their own safety. In a quotation from the article by reporter Chivis Martinez, Cardosa says “She knows that many people are concerned for them, but for their safety she cannot communicate with anyone nor her family. She asks the Federals of Mexico for protection not only for her and her son but for her family.” Here is the link to the full article here: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/.
Mexico has an ugly urban legend. Las Mueras de Juarez. The dead women of Juarez. It’s femicide on an unimaginable scale, a legend only in that nobody can explain the mysterious disappearances of thousands of women, and the grisly graves found around Juarez. These women are mothers, sisters, daughters. They go to work at the factories, taking the bus to their night shifts, knowing that they may be prey for whomever has been killing women for almost two decades now. Astonishingly, the authorities have been unable to crack the case. Reporter Brooke Binkoswki had enough of the silence, and brought their stories to light in her recent piece in The Globe & Mail.
Nor have authorities been able to assist in other mass disappearances, like the most recent of 43 male students from a teachers college who went to Iguala to protest at a conference held by the mayor’s wife. They were kidnapped and killed but the bodies have not been found. The mayor and his wife masterminded the plot and the chief of police assisted. He is still on the loose. As per the recent article by Chantal Flores in Vice News, the ongoing search has instead turned up 129 bodies, in 60 hidden graves.
The current state of global affairs truly feels like management by crisis. But North America has its own crisis that has been left unattended to simmer south of the border far too long. We ignore the endemic corruption within Mexico at our own peril. Because when we confront the culture of “Plato o plomo”, silence is not golden.
Thanks for reading!
Cheryl Biswas
Issues and Intersections 