Mexican cartels continue supplying illegal drugs despite massive numbers of arrests and deaths

The total number of people employed in aggregate by Mexican drug cartels must be just massive.

According to the Washington Post ("Mexico launches 8th offensive in drive against drug cartels," Dec. 1), 14,000 cartel-related suspects have been arrested in Mexico in the last year, while 4,000 more people died in the intra-cartel feuds over favored supply routes in the last 18 months. Some of those 4,000 were police or elected officials who opposed illegal drug trafficking, but most deaths were from rival cartel members killing each other.

So assuming these data are accurate, that's a total 18,000+ recent cartel-related arrests and deaths. Dozens of tons of cocaine and marijuana have been captured over the same time frame, each with its own, jubilant, self-congratulatory press release. But nobody thinks any of this has done more than, at most, slightly raise the price of some drugs in some areas of the United States, and even those claims' veracity is disputable.

“What worries us as a society is that even if this year nearly 50 tons of cocaine have been seized, most of the traffic of narcotics is not detected, so the perception of impunity and corruption continues to be very high,” María Elena Morera, president of Mexico United Against Crime, an advocacy group, told the New York Times.

So if fifty tons of cocaine seizures, 4,000 deaths and 14,000 arrests weren't enough to reduce drug trafficking in Mexico, how many people must be arrested or killed before the problem is under control? There must be many, many more people smuggling drugs through Mexico if reducing the cartels' workforce by that amount hasn't made a major dent.

These are not just 18,000 criminals, they're 18,000 people who worked in one of the more lucrative Mexican industries, meaning that, en masse, the drug war has a negative effect on Mexican domestic demand the same way 18,000 middle-class layoffs in a major industry might effect the US economy. That's a lot of folks.

That large number of arrests must also mean they're mainly catching "little fish" with little tangible effect on overall drug supplies. Most of the bigger fish captured, with one or two high-profile exceptions, have come from the Gulf Cartel, which has led me to wonder if the overall strategy of the Mexican government might not be to pick a side in the cartel wars instead of to stop all illegal drugs. The quickest way to reduce violence in Mexico, which after all stems mainly from competition among rival illegal businesses - would be for the government to enforce an informal monopoly for one side or the other, probably the Sinaloa drug syndicate. By comparison, the Sysiphian task of halting all illegal drugs likely cannot be accomplished any time soon, even if it's what the US might prefer.

Time will tell which way Mexican President Felipe Calderon is headed.