Mexico is being torn apart with 12,000 deaths resulting from the drug war just in 2011. Compare that to the deaths of 4,800 U.S. soldiers and marines during the nearly nine years we were fighting in Iraq.
From Borderland Beat:
MEXICO’S DRUG-WAR DEAD: 12,000 IN 2011
An estimated 50,000 dead since 2006
by Sarah Childress
Global PostQue Pasa?
January 3, 2012
According to La Reforma, a major, respected daily, there were 12,359 deaths last year, which they say is a 6.3 percent increase from 2010. La Jornada, on the other hand, counted only, 11,890 deaths, which it said was a slight decrease from the year before.
Do those numbers really matter? Not really. What's most important is the public perception — that the drug war has only gotten worse since President Felipe Calderon put the cartels in his crosshairs in 2006.
You could even argue that it has failed. After five years, the fight has cost too much in blood and treasure — an estimated 50,000 dead over the entire period. That doesn't count the missing. Worse, Mexicans have very little to show for their sacrifice.
Instead of breaking the backs of the cartels, the drug gangs have spread further into Central America, hitting Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala.
In Mexico, the drug war has sapped people's basic sense of security in cartel-controlled areas. Business owners pay bribes to keep the cartels at bay. Mexican security forces are accused of abusing civilians under the pretext of the drug-war battle. The cartels are no longer content to run their businesses in secret, and instead have become emboldened to do as they please.
They behead, disembowel, and string up their rivals. Or innocent civilians who by chance step into the crossfire. They have murdered people en masse. And they have done almost all of this with impunity.
What kind of country is it when this kind of violence can go unpunished so often it becomes banal?
The government response has been muted. Calderon's biggest PR push this year was to encourage tourism to Mexican resorts, which have been hit hard by the violence.
The government hasn't even released its own figures on the body count, despite promising to track deaths on its own.
49 KIDNAPPINGS PER DAY OCCURRED IN MEXICO IN 2011
Associated Press
January 3, 2012
An average of 49 kidnappings per day occurred in Mexico in 2011, marking a significant increase from the prior year, the Council for Law and Human Rights, or CLDH, said.
A total of 17,889 kidnappings occurred in Mexico last year, up 32 percent from the 13,505 abductions registered in 2010, the non-governmental organization said.
“It is important to note that official complaints to the authorities have remained at a rate of one for every 10 cases,” said CLDH president Fernando Ruiz in an e-mail.
The figures do not included “express kidnappings,” in which a victim is held for only a few hours, the CLDH said.
Hundreds of express kidnappings occur in Mexico City daily, with taxi drivers usually assisting the criminals, the NGO said.
Kidnapping gangs are increasingly using technology to target victims, and some criminals have negotiated the payment of ransom with victims’ relatives outside the country, the CLDH said.
“That is, some gangs of kidnappers have influence at the international level, making it impossible to obtain a partial identification of their members and capture them,” the NGO said.
The number of kidnapping cases in which police and soldiers were involved rose from 70 percent in the first half of 2011 to 80 percent in the second half of the year, the CLDH said.
“Their level of participation ranges from leaking information about a victim’s profile to providing protection during the actual kidnapping and directly carrying out the kidnapping,” Ruiz said.
About one-third of the kidnappers arrested by the Federal Police, according to official figures, have links to drug cartels.
The CLDH, which was founded in 1991, provides assistance to kidnapping and extortion victims, and works to root out corruption in the ranks of the police.
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