Part 1: Citation

CFR.org Editors. “Mexico’s Long War: Drugs, Crime, and the Cartels.” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, 8 Feb. 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels. 

Part 2: Summary 

This article overall goes over Mexico’s drug war and its effects. Some main points of the articles include explaining how drugs come into the U.S. illegally, what has been done against cartels, the effects on the people of Mexico and the U.S.’s actions regarding the drug war. They mention that “Mexican drug trafficking groups … dominate the import and distribution of cocaine, fentanyl, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine in the United States.” They show just how much money Americans spend on these drugs, 150 billion to be exact. In the last couple of years, the demand for these drugs coming from Mexico has only gone up, and the U.S. has not done anything effective to reduce this. Many of the smugglers are caught before they enter the U.S., however many others do not. They use tunnels, boats, aircrafts, and ground vehicles to get the drugs into the U.S. After that, they have ties to folks in the U.S. who will distribute the drugs for them. While president Calderon was in office, he received aid from the U.S. and together they got rid of twenty five high ranking drug kingpins, leaving twelve. However, that may have only made the citation worse by leading to the creation of many more smaller criminal groups in Mexico. This is because without a leader, the groups were lost and decided to go and start their own organization. In Mexico, there have been countless cases where people go missing and are never found. Some famous cases include the one where 40 protestors who were students went missing. After some investigation, it was revealed that there was some teamwork between cartel members and the police, a.k.a. Corruption. This led to huge protests throughout Mexico demanding answers as well as an end to the corruption in their country. As a result of all of these cartels killing civilians, there has been a rise in autodefensas, which are similar to militias, they are groups of civilians who came together to protect their communities against cartel organizations. The U.S. has put billions into the drug war. When Trump came into office, he increased the security along the border as a result of the drugs coming into the U.S. among other things.

Part 3: Reflection

When it comes to the smugglers who get caught in the border at checkpoints, I wonder what happens to them. I wonder if the U.S. takes them in, are they sent back to Mexican authorities, etc. I also wonder who contacted who first when it came to the student protestors, did the cartel reach out to the police to get rid of them, or did the police maybe ask the cartel to get rid of the students for them. In order to better understand the article, I need to do more research on what exactly the U.S. has done to help Mexico. The reason I say this is because there are still ridiculous acts of violence happening down there, meaning that what the U.S. did to help didn’t help much, or at least that’s what I think. I also think that I need to search up the details as to how the drugs are smuggled into the U.S., because it seems kind of crazy to me that they are using aircrafts and tunnels. It’s not that I am not believing it, but I am wondering just how exactly they do this, what the procedure is. I also need to search up and better understand the corruption down in Mexico between public leaders and organizations and cartels. I believe that the number one reason for corruption is money, everybody wants money and power. This document tells me that innocent people are being targeted by cartels backed up by the police, it tells me that for some, justice will not be served. I think that the author’s writing style is very good in this article. I say this because they went section by section with subheadings, it was very clear and the order made perfect sense. I believe that the purpose of the author writing this is to let the public know why the war is still ongoing, why it still has to not come to an end. I think the intended audience is Americans, whether that be North Americans, Central Americans or South Americans. I believe that this source is reliable because it is not biased. To back up my claim, the cfr is a non-profit based in New York. They are not with the government, they are independent of them, their focus is on Foreign policies.

Part 4: Quotation(s)

  • ” The country has seen more than three hundred thousand homicides since 2006, when the government declared war on the cartels.”
  • ” More than sixty-six thousand people have disappeared since 2006, primarily at the hands of criminal organizations such as cartels, though government forces also play a role.”
  • ”In recent years, vigilante groups known as autodefensas have sought to fill in where security forces have failed to protect communities from criminal groups.”