Contemplate, if you will, what life in Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo Mexico is like now. In Monterrey, automatic gunfire is routinely heard at night. Narcos blockade streets in attempts to hijack cars. Residents gun their engines in response, stopping for nothing. Gunman race through the streets shooting at each other. Police stations and TV stations are attacked with hand grenades.
In anything, it’s even worse in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, where the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel, and the military and government fight it out for dominance.
To travel on the streets in an automobile at night is a high risk invitation to a carjacking.
Relatives on the U.S. side of the border are warned not to enter Nuevo Laredo.
The rule of law as we know it in the U.S. does not exist in Nuevo Laredo. The proud, innocent residents of this city, which are the vast majority, do not deserve this fate.
The Mexican government does not seem capable of stopping the cartels. Worse, factions within it don’t want to, as they are allied with cartels such as the Beltrán Leyva Organization, which has “successfully infiltrated the upper levels of the Mexican government, as well as US diplomatic establishments.”
All of this of course is fueled by US drug consumption and ever-willing corrupt US banks, hedge funds, and financial institutions happy to launder the quite literal blood money.
Really folks, let’s just legalize drugs. Portugal did, and consumption dropped.
Sir Douglas Quintet. Nuevo Laredo. Back when it was adventurous fun, not life-threatening, to go there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM2uOhiM2YM
I heard about the cartels now controlling the Mexican media. This Mexican drug war is shaping out to be identical to what happened in Columbia with the cocaine cartels in the 90’s. Will U.S. forces be sent south of the border, like they were sent to South America?
In the Borderland Beat article I linked to, the author says some residents of Nuevo Laredo are semi-hoping the US will intervene.