I meant to write about this article when it came out, but since I didn't get to a full analysis, I wanted to at least pose the question from Dane Schiller at the Houston Chronicle (Oct. 8): "Why no big drug bosses this side of the border?"For the record, I think there ARE big drug bosses on this side of the border. Look at the pile of money from this now famous picture taken at a bust in a wealthy Mexico City suburb earlier this year: The pile of colored paper in the front are Mexican pesos, while the familiar colored stacks behind them are good ol' American greenbacks. That tells me the money guys are Americans, not Mexican capos. I wonder, like officials in Colombia and Mexico, why we know so much about organized crime in Latin America, but so little about crime bosses here:
"I certainly would love to see where is the Pablo Escobar of Texas," Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos, who was once kidnapped by Escobar, said on a recent visit to Houston. "I would love to know."Governor Perry's border security council guru Fred Burton says those kind of kingpins don't exist here because, "Our law enforcement efforts are too good. Our intelligence is too good and we don't have the vast corruption." Maybe so; I hope he's right. OTOH, the same Mr. Burton nine days later released a study that said Texas is potentially vulnerable to border-region drug violence because law enforcement is "poorly coordinated, undersupplied and sometimes corrupt."Former Mexican President Vicente Fox shared Santos' concern.
"That is the question I always ask myself," Fox said recently by phone from California. His speaking tour comes to Houston next week. "Who crosses or permits the drugs to be crossed at the border, and when on the U.S. side of the border, who transports the drugs to the markets of this great nation?"
That would be closer to my own assessment. It's hard to argue with that huge stack of American cash, and hard not to wonder who in America is responsible for the distribution and profits from Mexican cartel suppliers?
They couldn't make that border wall high enough as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteAs if a wall would matter with THAT much money involved.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the drug capos of the US are all holding political office. Especially in Texas
ReplyDeleteYes, and there are no gay people in Iran - if you believed their president in a speech to Columbia University. When you have that much money in any country you gain a serious amount of political leverage and protection. Most big gang bosses contribute heavily to "law and order" testosterone monkeys who promote "crackdowns" on crime. It helps keep down the "riff raff" and reduce competition. And those testosterone monkeys get elected and pass on monies gained from taxpayers to political cronies - and those cronies often include those very same crime bosses [going legit?]. I have known some small scale hoods who never drew the attention of police or crime bosses. They told me how it worked in the 70s and 80s. I don't see how it would change that much.
ReplyDeleteWhere are all the drug bosses in the U.S.? They crossed our border, remember?
ReplyDeleteI think your logic is faulty when you say that because the money found as shown in the picture is mostly american dollars, that this means the big bosses are american.
ReplyDeleteIn most countries, no one wants any kind of currency but american dollars. Certainly, a mexican drug boss would be an idiot to want pesos instead of dollars.
Plus the fact the money was found in mexico, and not in america.
To quote your first poster in this thread..."They couldn't make that border wall high enough as far as I'm concerned."
Our American drug bosses are mostly made up of prison gangs run from prison and operationg on the streets. There is no one big boss but rather a cooperating cartel of gangs like the Texas Syndicate, Mexikanemi, Aryan Brotherhood (California, Arizona, Texas), Pistoleros (Laredo), and other smaller ones.
ReplyDelete