Contrary to popular belief, the Mexican government is “gaining the upper hand in a drug war that has turned much of the border region and parts of interior Mexico into war zones,” an expert on the topic asserts in a column published by the Houston Chronicle.
“The command-and-control structure of the cartels has been decimated and the cartels are severely fractured,” Ricardo Ainslie wrote in the June 25 column. “Twenty-one of the 37 individuals on Mexico’s most wanted list have either been apprehended or killed. Of the five original cartels, two of them, the Juarez Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel, are mere shadows of their once powerful selves.”
Ainslie, who teaches as the University of Texas-Austin, is the author of a forthcoming book about the drug war and has spent two years, according to the column, “exploring the impact of the violence on Ciudad Juarez, as well as interviewing Mexican policymakers, including several current and former members of President Felipe Calderón’s security cabinet.”
Here’s what Ainslie found:
“After a series of visits to Ciudad Juarez, the war’s epicenter, and interviews with federal law enforcement and intelligence officials in Mexico City, I see convincing evidence that the government has dramatically weakened the drug cartels, an essential step if the country is to restore peace,” he wrote.
But, he wrote, Mexico has another huge problem. While the “decimation of the cartels, the strengthening of federal law enforcement institutions, and Mexico’s increasing democratization bode well for Mexico’s future,” the successful battle against the cartels hasn’t done much to reduce the violence that plagues Mexico.
That’s because the majority of deaths are caused by “gang-on-gang disputes related to the local retail drug business,” he wrote, adding that the fracturing of the cartels has “resulted in a proliferation of criminal bands engaging in ordinary street crime, including the lucrative kidnapping and extortion business.”
“The Mexican government is clearly winning the cartel war; it is local crime that has become the country’s biggest challenge,” he wrote.
He claimed it will remain that way until state and local law enforcement agencies are strengthened, the nation’s judiciary is reformed and social conditions improve.