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Journalist: Mexico's Government More Dangerous than Drug Cartels

Prominent journalist Anabel Hernandez, author or the Mexican best selling non-fiction book “Los Señores del Narco” (translated into English as “Narcoland,”) says Mexico's officials are more dangerous than the leaders of the drug cartels.

What I have learned in nine years of investigation into drug trafficking is that a general, a public security secretary or a governor is more dangerous than Chapo Guzman himself. They are the ones that betray the country, that sell the state to organized crime and they should face exemplary punishments. … If there are no exemplary punishments against the Mexican political and business class who permit people like Chapo Guzman to exist, then nothing is going to change and we are just going to be repeating this story of death, sometimes with more violence, sometimes with less, but always with the Mexican state under control of drug traffickers. We have to break this cycle.

On President Nieto: [More...]

I believe that Enrique Peña Nieto is trying to make an old-style pact with drug traffickers. The issue is that he won’t be able to because organized crime is so pulverized and there are so many loose criminal cells that don’t take orders from anybody. What I can say is that the Sinaloa cartel is achieving under this administration what it didn’t achieve in its best years under Fox and Calderon.

She has no doubt the Government aided the Sinaloa cartel:

The war on drug trafficking was never real. Its only intention was to protect the Sinaloa cartel and attack others.

But she doesn't believe in legalization. In fact, she urges a new face to the war on drugs.

To have a true war on drugs we need to investigate the big world banks, put all the money launderers in prison. The war on drugs is not with a pistol or an AK-47. The war on drugs has to be financial.

While I'm more interested in the cartels and the American government's role in targeting them, than I am with the corruption inside the Mexican Government, her reporting is widely credited and respected and worthy of a read.

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  • Display: Sort:
    If not for those drug cartels... (none / 0) (#1)
    by unitron on Thu Jul 17, 2014 at 09:26:48 PM EST
    ...the Mexican government wouldn't be capable of that particular danger.

    Which is not to say that they wouldn't be perfectly capable of being less than ideal in many other ways and areas, of course.

    But it's not the government making the cartels corrupt, they manage that on their own.