The ambushes by La Familia in eight cities spread across the western state of Michoacan on Saturday were carried out with disciplined force by small but bold units of cartel gunmen, backed with military-grade assault rifles and grenades.The offensive began in the capital, Morelia, and lasted 10 hours. The attacks, in which convoys of gunmen sprung surprise attacks on government positions, occurred near sites popular with tourists, including the arts-and-crafts town of Patzcuaro and nearby Zitacuaro, famous for its migrating monarch butterflies. Much of the fighting took place in and around cities where the federal government arrested 10 mayors last month on suspicion of colluding with La Familia. Mexican media reported two more attacks Sunday.
According to the article, five were killed and a dozen wounded.
President Felipe Calderon has had to send in the army and federal police because in most cases the local police, prosecutors, city governments, judges, and jailers have been either bought by the cartels or intimidated into passivity. La Familia's weekend counterattack is an indicator of the force one of Mexico's smaller drug cartels is able to muster.
The urgent question is whether Mexico's institutions will be able to enforce the rule of law through accepted civil procedures. Once the police, public administrators, courts, and prison system effectively become subsidiaries of the cartels, the rule of law slips out of grasp.
Twenty years ago, during the reign of Pablo Escobar, Colombia plunged into this chasm. In his brilliant book Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden described what measures became necessary to save Colombia from Escobar.
At the depth of the Escobar crisis, Los Pepes appeared. According to Bowden, this secretive vigilante death squad, obviously enjoying access to the full intelligence database on Escobar's organization, proceeded to murder or chase into exile the various rings of Escobar's support structure. When the police finally gunned him down, Los Pepes had reduced Escobar's imperial entourage to a couple bodyguards holed up with the boss in a downscale apartment.
Who were Los Pepes? Loyal Colombian police or special forces soldiers? Cartel rivals of Escobar, quietly assisted by police intelligence? Or foreign mercenaries?
Los Pepes were ruthless killers, even terrorists and in no way represented the rule of law. But in Bowden's reckoning they saved Colombia when there was no other way to stop Escobar. Will Mexico require the same salvation?
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There are a number of vigilante groups that are operating locally in Mexico. In fact, I've heard that several elite families and business people in Monterrey wanted to hire a private security firm to go after traffickers and gangs. The Mexican government put the kibosh on the plan and insisted that they place their trust in the government. How long this will hold out is anyone's guess.
Another interesting question is whether a private military firm might be hired to assist the Mexican government. Could Xe have a new client sometime in the future??
In the 1980s, a negligible percentage of the cocaine bound for the U.S. shipped through Mexico. Then the U.S. started cracking down on Colombians shipping cocaine through the transit zone in the Caribbean. So, the Colombians redirected the drugs overland through Mexico. At first they subcontracted with old smuggling families to move cocaine loads along the same routes they'd used for marijuana and opium for generations. Eventually, Juan Garcia Abrego of the Gulf Cartel figured out that he could triple his profits by getting the Cali Cartel to pay him in drugs instead of cash for moving their loads.
When the U.S. smashed the Colombian cartels in the nineties, the power shifted to the Mexican cartels. Killing Pablo moved the fight into America's back yard. So, before we start talking about sending death squads after Mexican cartel leaders, let's think carefully about where the problem is likely to crop up next.
Most evidence suggests that Los Pepes were in fact rival drug traffickers. The Castano brothers and Diego Murillo-Bejerano were all Los Pepes --- all were major drug traffickers. Murillo-Bejerano and Carlos Castano later became major figures in the AUC militia movement, which specialized in massacring peasants in large numbers.
By no stretch of the imagination could they be characterized as 'vigilantes' or 'otherwise law abiding.' They were criminals engaged in a gang war with the aid of the state. Note that the cocaine trade did not experience any real dropoff as a result of Escobar's death.
The problem in Mexico is not too much rule of law, but far too little. Further eroding the state by encouraging death squads made up of rival criminals doesn't seem to me a good solution. Akin to fighting a case of food poisoning by swallowing cyanide.
Besides, let's be honest. Juarez shows us that that cartels are doing quite a good job killing themselves off.
It has been tried many times, in many places, with mixed results.
The Bakassi Boys of Igbo Nigeria are another example: http://www.waado.org/NigerDelta/Documents/ConstitutionalMatters/PoliceV…
It is generally not a good thing when otherwise law-abiding people take it upon themselves to become faceless butchers, but if crime gets bad enough, they will emerge from the community on their own.