The Los Angeles Times ran a story on Richard Padilla Cramer, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who then spent over two decades working for U.S. Customs on the Mexican border. To his colleagues, friends, and family he was the ultimate warrior against the drug smugglers, having worked undercover, busted corrupt officials, and held an important diplomatic post in Mexico. Now it is Cramer who stands accused of corruption and will stand trial for having secretly been himself a drug mafioso.
Writing in The Atlantic, Philip Caputo, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and author of A Rumor of War, ventured south of the border to see Mexico's war for himself. Everyone is now counting on Mexico's army to fight the war Mexico's police long ago abandoned. But Caputo hears rumors that the army may now be in the drug business as deeply as any cartel is. Caputo reports that in Mexico it is dangerous to know, let alone say, the truth.
Finally, at FPRI, George Grayson, one of the leading scholars on Mexico's drug violence, writes about the rise in self-organized defense, aka vigilantism, in Mexico. Some such groups have come out in the open. Grayson predicts that vigilante self-defense organizations in Mexico will soon become a major growth industry.
Comments
Padilla Cramer was trying to move dope in somebody else ´s territory: Panama. Crooked DEA and FBI fiends work for the Colombians down there. See the murder of Panama ´s drug detective Franklin Brewster. A tale of a fake investigation by the FBI and the DEA, bogus FBI agents, fake documents and two US Ambassadors covering up a drug murder
http://franklinbrewster.weebly.com/
While I shed no tears for the gangs of Mexico, this is a troubling if obvious trend. As people see a failure in the state to protect them or respond to problems they decide to do it themselves. In addition this becomes even more popular as the local politicians will all have some connection to crime, making it an accepted way of handling matters to order a death squad to target a rival. Lastly we should probably expect the same situation as in Columbia, only with cartels as the third actor in this and not left-wing insurgents.