I recently watched a documentary film called "Cocaine Cowboys." It chronicles the rise of the cocaine trade in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s. Fascinating film that I highly recommend. It interviews a few of the key players, some - two American transporters - who where released from long prison sentences in 2004, another - a Columbian hit-man - who is still serving a life sentence. The most fascinating part to me was that through the 70s and earliest part of the 80s, these people - mostly Columbians and Cubans, with some American help - were importing billions of dollars of cocaine a month almost unstopped and undetected. The high-rise, high-class Miami you see today was funded almost entirely by this drug money of the 1970s. The trade could have continued unabated today if it wasn't for the murders that started to happen in the 80s. Turns out the Columbians went crazy and ruined it for themselves. They just started killing each other...in public, in night clubs, in late night raids, en masse sparing no woman or child. The feds didn't really show up until the murders started occuring.
Which brings me to present day Northern Mexico. I was forwarded another article about the
drug wars going on in Northern Baja and some of the fallout on American tourists. The article reports on an uncovered DEA document that states,
"since 2005, one-thousand people have been kidnapped in Mexico, while 43 are known to have died and many have disappeared. In Tijuana alone, in just the first half of last year, 91 kidnappings were reported -- roughly one victim every other day, according to the report."
The article concludes that the violent inter-gang killings has resulted in a violent fight for power, the robbing of tourists and the emergence of kidnapping as a lucrative alternative to drug running. The kidnappers are earning an estimated $6 million per month and have made Mexico home to the most number of kidnappings in Latin America - recently surpassing Columbia.
If we are witnessing a rerun of the Cocaine Cowboys, it seems to have regenerated in a more violent, and more destructive form. In the Miami wars, drug cartels targeted each other for control over the drug trade, and bystanders were often caught in the middle. Now, the bystanders - the tourists, surfers, lobster seekers, retired folks buying cheap prescription drugs, underage drinkers - are the targets.
The movie ends with most of the old cartel people dying or getting arrested. The corrupt and complicit Dade county police department was cleaned out. How this one will end I have no idea. To be sure, the Mexican tourist industry will suffer severely. This could be the only thing to motivate Mexican authorities to get their act together and clean out their own corrupt and complicit security agencies. Or, a more likely scenario is that this will blow over. The kidnappings and drug killings will calm down after a dominant cartel wins out, the drug trade will continue, and the tourists will return.
