11-10-17 Mexico’s militarized crackdown on drug cartels over the past decade has cost more than 200,000 lives and left more than 30,000 missing. But by its own terms, it has been a failure: 2017 is shaping up to be the country’s the most violent year on record….
“The Zetas paid bribes and integrated police officers into their hierarchy to ensure the cartel would be able to continue their illicit operations without resistance,” it said. “Witnesses described a level of Zeta control which extended to city police chiefs, state and federal prosecutors, state prisons, sectors of the federal police and the Mexican army, and state politicians.” The report also quoted explosive accusations made in US courts that Los Zetas paid off a pair of Coahuila state governors and pumped millions into state elections elsewhere in the country. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/10/mexico-drug-cartels-grip-on-politicians-and-police-revealed-in-texas-court-files
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4-22-18 About 80 candidates have been murdered since campaigning for Mexico's 2018 elections began in September. Many have been targeted for opposing drug cartels — or conspiring with them. Sandra Weiss reports from Puebla….
"Narcopolitics isn't some vague threat," Reveles said. "It's a reality." He estimates that about 45 percent of all municipalities in Mexico are controlled by organized crime and that the numbers will only get worse.
Mexico has a "weak state, co-opted by the mafia," Buscaglia said. Citing a report by Global Financial Integrity, he added that the country has "the third largest underground economy — after China and Russia.”…
Municipalities are the weakest link, the journalist Reveles said. He argues that the cartels are not just looking to control smuggling routes but also to secure government contracts for the purpose of laundering money. That is why, Reveles said, they install cartel-friendly police commissioners, town treasurers, district council presidents and mayors — and get rid of anyone who opposes them.
In Mexico, candidates are designated by party leaders without consulting rank-and-file members. "The non-transparent way candidates are announced and parties are financed, and the lack of checks through the judiciary or tax authorities, mean cartels have an easy time influencing politics," Buscaglia said.
Insiders estimate that campaign financing is often 10 times what it is allowed to be. But there's hardly ever a paper trail — "because almost all payments are made in cash, handled in suitcases or egg cartons," as one campaign helper told DW.
Experts doubt that there will be improvements anytime soon. "None of the candidates have presented a cogent program to tackle crime," the IMDHD's Cortez said. https://www.dw.com/en/narco-cartels-target-politicians-as-mexicos-elections-near/a-43489100
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-Vicente Zambada
4-11-2014 With the stroke of a pen, the cartel insider who once vowed to put US undercover operations in Mexico on trial turned into an informant against the Sinaloa cartel of his powerful father, Ismael Zambada, a kingpin known simply as El Mayo.
Zambada, 39, was captured in 2009 in Mexico City by a special unit of the Mexican army, four hours after he met in a private room at the Sheraton Hotel with two agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was extradited to Chicago in 2010 to face charges that he was the “logistical co-ordinator” for the Sinaloa cartel, overseeing shipments of cocaine and heroin by the ton from South and Central America through Mexico and into the United States.
Court documents from three years ago said the Sinaloa cartel had been given most favored status to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into the US while its leaders were protected from arrest and prosecution at home. His defense strategy was clear: threaten to unravel the the US "war on drugs" in Mexico. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/11/mexican-drug-lord-10-years-sinaloa-cartel
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1-14-14 For over a decade, under multiple administrations, the U.S. government had a secret agreement with the ruthless Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to operate with impunity, an in-depth investigation by a leading Mexican newspaper confirmed this week. In exchange for information and assistance in quashing competing criminal syndicates, the Bush and Obama administrations let the Sinaloa cartel import tons of drugs into the United States while wiping out Sinaloa competitors and ensuring that its leaders would not be prosecuted for their long list of major crimes. Other revelations also point strongly to massive but clandestine U.S. government involvement in drug trafficking.
Relying on over 100 interviews with current and former government functionaries on both sides of the border, as well as official documents from the U.S. and Mexican governments, Mexico’s El Universal concluded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Justice Department had secretly worked with Mexican drug lords. The controversial conspiring led to increased violence across Mexico, where many tens of thousands have been murdered in recent years, the newspaper found after its year-long probe. The U.S. agents and their shady deals with Mexican drug lords even sparked what the paper called a “secret war” inside Mexico….
According to former officials and drug kingpins, the agreements between Sinaloa and Washington also allowed the criminal empire to ship multi-ton quantities of hard drugs across the border into the United States. In all, El Universal said there had been at least 50 meetings in Mexico between U.S. government agents and senior Sinaloa bosses, along with many more phone calls and e-mails. The criminal syndicate’s leaders “were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution,” Zambada-Niebla’s court filings state, adding that the U.S. government has the documents proving it. “Indeed, United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
Unsurprisingly, none of the American federal agencies implicated in the machinations would comment on the revelations. However, citing court documents and official records it published online — as well as numerous interviews with federal agents, convicts, and analysts — the paper was able to conclusively confirm what experts and even officials have been arguing for years: The U.S. government is deeply intertwined with the drug trade….
Even former DEA chief Robert Bonner, during an explosive interview with CBS, revealed that his agency had learned that the U.S. intelligence outfit unlawfully imported a ton of cocaine into the United States in cooperation with the Venezuelan government. According to the agency’s inspector general, the CIA was indeed working with traffickers but received a “waiver” from the Justice Department purporting to allow the government crime spree to remain secret. More recently, a Mexican official accused the CIA of “managing” the global drug trade.
The Mexican investigation follows decades of explosive revelations and accusations, many documented by The New American, suggesting that Washington, D.C., plays a crucial role in facilitating the international drug trade. In fact, more than a few officials, drug lords, and analysts have even said that the CIA and other secretive U.S. and foreign agencies actually run the global trade in narcotics, laundering the profits, and more. The DEA was even investigated by Congress last year for helping to launder drug money, while the ATF was exposed supplying U.S. weapons to Mexican cartels. ICE has reportedly been allowing cartel hit men into the United States to murder. So far, none of the high-ranking officials responsible for the lawlessness have truly been held accountable. https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/north-america/item/17396-u-s-government-and-top-mexican-drug-cartel-exposed-as-partners
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-Calderon
“7-28-2012 It is impossible to pass tons of drugs or cocaine to U.S. without some grade of complicity of some American authorities,” observed Mexican President Felipe Calderon in a 2009 interview with the BBC. https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/12247-cia-manages-drug-trade-mexican-official-says
4-13-09 President Calderon also took the opportunity to complain once again about American guns that are smuggled into Mexico, pointing out that there are over 10,000 guns stores in (US) cities and towns close to the border. https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/north-america/item/10543-calderon-us-officials-involved-in-drug-trade
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