American dirty wars helped create Mexico’s powerful cartels
The images coming out of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa yesterday are bound to be shocking for many. Those whose only knowledge about the country comes from sensational and often racist reporting in the US media will only have their prior misconceptions reinforced once they’ve seen photos and video of the battle between Mexican Law Enforcement/National Guards and what were almost certainly members of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The fighting erupted when a National Guard unit attempted to arrest the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, one of the current leaders of the Sinaloa cartel.
While fighting between rival cartels or security forces spilling into the streets, even during the daytime, isn’t particularly uncommon in the past couple of decades, the appearance of technicals (stock vehicles like pickup trucks fitted with armor and mounted weapons) and anti-materiel rifles may be especially jarring to the uninformed.
To your casual western observer, such weapons immense rise in popularity amongst the increasingly paramilitarized criminal organizations such as the cartels may appear to be an escalation in their seemingly endless conflict with the Mexican state. Considering all the coverage of the technical as a hallmark of ISIS in Syria and the dearth of American news outlets reporting on Mexico, it’s understandable that people might come to such a conclusion.
The standard American view of the conflict is one devoid of historical analysis and stripped of all context. A racist, and incorrect, narrative of a dysfunctional state apparatus in a backwards country. A “shithole country” as Donald Trump would have you believe. Make no mistake, these are the same narratives the right and many liberals have indulged in for decades to justify their xenophobic immigration and neo-colonial trade policy, but like every other Latin American nation our politicians work so hard to demonize it’s far from the truth.
That truth isn’t what the racists and politicians would have you believe. The problems that brought Mexico to this point have nothing to do with race science or any of the other lies told about countries outside the wealthy “first world”. The answer lies in history, and much of it the history of US foreign policy.
While many factors contributed to the current state of things, I don’t have the expertise or the time to detail Mexico’s political and social history, or even the entirety of its relationship with the United States. From the Monroe Doctrine, to the settling of Texas by white slavers looking to ensure the continuation of human bondage, to the annexation of it as a state, to the Mexican-American war and the annexation of the now US west, and interference in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 there’s a long history between the two nations that provides much needed prologue to more recent events.
Throughout the Cold War the United States and its intelligence agencies waged a series of secret dirty wars throughout the world in its effort to “contain” the spread of communism and the influence of the Soviet Union. Starting as early as the Korean War the CIA and other alphabet soup agencies recognized the potential of organized crime, especially drug trafficking, to act as both a source of income for operations the elected elements of US Government either wouldn’t fund or wouldn’t approve. This isn’t to say they necessarily directly participated in the actual production, but plenty of evidence points to their hand in facilitating the distribution, and benefiting from its sales.
The most well known iteration of this would probably be the Golden Triangle trade in southeast Asia, an area that was responsible for producing a substantial portion of the world’s poppy and opium. The CIA involvement in the Golden Triangle was used to prop up the KMT in China as well as other anti-communist formations in Laos and Cambodia, and provided funds to numerous clandestine, and almost certainly illegal, operations in Vietnam.
A more recent example would be the explosion of the opium trade to heretofore unseen levels in Afghanistan, this time not to fight communism, but instead the so-called War on Terror. And again, the CIA’s fingerprints have been all over it.
In the case of Mexico, we find ourselves drawn back into the Latin American dirty wars for our example. While many people might be familiar with Iran-Contra, they might not be aware that for years the illicit dealings to acquire funds and material support for the Nicaraguan death squads went beyond selling arms to Iran to include the international drug trade.
While Gary Webb’s reporting in the 90’s made some small headway in the broader American consciousness, there has been a consistent drumbeat of denial, disingenuously framing Webb himself and anyone else considering the ever mounting evidence as conspiracy theorists.
How Mexico fits into this is relatively straightforward. Cocaine being trafficked from central and south America generally took 2 routes into the US. At first, primarily through Miami, but as interdiction and law enforcement increased its presence in the Magic City the southern US border with Mexico became the safer route.
Mexico’s extant drug trafficking organizations at the time were nowhere near as wealthy, powerful, or violent as they are now. It was the massive infusion of cash, arms, and support they received, in service of funding the Contras, that helped make them what they are today. By some accounts, keeping this smuggling and distribution scheme secret was so important to US intelligence operations that they allegedly went as far as assisting one narco in abducting and torturing an American DEA agent to death. Add to this, the disaster that was the ATF’s Fast and Furious operation, which resulted in hundreds if not thousands of fully automatic high-quality weapons being sold to narcos by a federal agency and the constant outflow of firearms from the United States to Mexico, and it becomes nearly impossible to deny an enormous amount of responsibility, if not the genesis of the problem itself, lies with the USG.
The blanket refusal by American media to consider all of this has only become more absurd as time passes, especially in Mexico, considering revelations that three Mexican Presidents, all linked to corruption and narco traffickers, were confirmed CIA assets. Or that the US struck a deal to cooperate with the very cartel battling the National Guard in Culiacán that it only recently abandoned.
Not all Mexican press, or political leaders, on the other hand, are quite so skeptical. Some are more than happy to direct people’s attention to the culpability of the USA.
Unfortunately, there’s unlikely to be any acknowledgement of responsibility, or restitution, anytime soon. So next time you see a story like the one coming out of Culiacán remember that blood is on our hands too.
Porfirio Diaz had it right when he said “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States”.
Jean Krill is is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His writing navigates the many disparate visions of a radically better future.