In December 2006, Mexico's newly elected Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels, thereby ending the state's passivity in this matter. Since then, some progress has been made, but at a high cost. Shootings, murders, kidnappings, conflicts between rival cartels, punitive measures. About 9,500 people have been killed in anti-drug efforts since December 2006, and more than 5,300 last year alone.

Ammunition seized from members of the Pacifico drug cartel at Mexico City airport. March 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez)

An American police officer in a captured greenhouse in the basement of a ranch in Tecate, Mexico. March 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Jorge Duenes)

A policeman walks among bags of cocaine in the city of Buenaventura, Colombia's main port on the Pacific coast. Monday, March 23, 2009. Colombian police confiscated 3.5 tons of cocaine that they were trying to smuggle into Mexico in a container of vegetable oil. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Yanet Daynara Garcia (center) and Zigifrido Najera (2nd from left), members of the Cardenas Guillen drug cartel, attend a press presentation at the Defense Minister's headquarters in Mexico City. March 20, 2009. (LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images)

Mexican drug trafficker Vicente Zambada Niebla meets with the media in Mexico City on March 19, 2009. Zambada was arrested along with five other suspects, police said. The arrested were found to have money and weapons. (REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar)

Soldiers guard a police station in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Monday, March 16, 2009. Since this city of 1.3 million people is largely policed ​​by the military, a retired officer was appointed head of the police as an accomplice after the previous head of the police department resigned from this post after succumbing to threats drug dealers. (AP Photo)

Federal police officers aboard a plane during a flight to the border city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Monday, March 2, 2009. The deployment is part of a plan to increase the law enforcement presence in Ciudad Juarez by 5,000 as the city suffers from an infestation of organized crime. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar)

A soldier oversees the burning of fourteen tons of drugs in the city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. December 2, 2008. (J. Guadalupe PEREZ/AFP/Getty Images)

Police drive past a burning patrol car in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Wednesday, February 25, 2009. Earlier in this resort town of Zihuatanejo, which is located on the Pacific Ocean, gunmen opened fire and threw grenades at a patrol car, killing four police officers. (AP Photo/Felipe Salinas)

Mexican police stand near a car containing two people killed in a shooting. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. November 25, 2008. (J. Guadalupe PEREZ/AFP/Getty Images)

A corpse on a table in the morgue before an autopsy. Tijuana, Mexico. Monday, January 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

Federal police patrol the city of Ciudad Juarez. March 2, 2009. Hundreds of military personnel in full gear and police convoys patrolled Ciudad Juarez in an attempt to restore order in one of the most violent cities. (REUTERS/Tomas Bravo)

Mexican soldiers check documents during a drug and weapons search in Reynosa, on Mexico's northeastern border with the United States, March 17, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

A tourist leaves the hotel. A policeman is standing guard nearby - one of the participants in the operation to defuse a bomb in a departmental institution in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. A report that a bomb had been planted in the building prompted local police and federal forces to launch the operation, local media reported. (REUTERS/Tomas Bravo)

Mexican soldiers inspect vehicles and carry out customs clearance at customs checkpoints near the town of Miguel Aleman, on Mexico's northeastern border with the United States. March 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

A Mexican soldier stands on the Mexico-US border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. March 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar)

Soldiers patrol near the town of Miguel Aleman, on Mexico's northeastern border with the United States, March 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Shoes used for marijuana smuggling are seen at the Drug Museum at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Mexico City, March 9, 2009. The museum displays many exhibits: sniper rifles, mobile and cordless phones encrusted with gold and diamonds, clandestine drug laboratories and many other items. that once belonged to drug traffickers. (REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez)

President of Texas Armoring Corp. Trent Kimball inspects his company's bulletproof glass, which was left with bullet holes from the previous day's shooting. San Antonio, February 26, 2009. Due to an increase in the number of clashes with drug traffickers in the northern regions of Mexico, American companies are increasingly ordering armored lining, bulletproof glass along with armored lining, bulletproof glass and such security gadgets as electronic door handles and alarms. pressing smoke screens. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Dawn over a canal near El Centro, California. March 12, 2009: El Centro has the highest unemployment rate in the United States: 22.6%. This is the same high figure recorded during the Great Depression. It’s especially hard for Latinos now. People living in the Imperial Valley, a desert north of the US-Mexico border and east of San Diego, are now suffering not only from the effects of the global financial crisis, but also from drought. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Central American migrants released by the military were held hostage by Mexican gang members in Reynosa, Mexico on March 17, 2009. More than 50 migrants are currently being held captive by the gang, which is involved in kidnapping for ransom, according to the Mexican army. (AP Photo/Alejandro Meneghini)

Forensic investigators remove one of nine bodies found near the border city of Ciudad Juarez on March 14, 2009. An anonymous caller called police to report that at least nine bodies were found in a shallow grave, local media reported. (REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas)

A man arrested by the military at a house where a gang was holding Central American migrants hostage. Reynosa, Mexico, March 17, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

A forensic investigator examines the vertebra and other bone fragments. This is all that remains of a human body that was burned in a barrel of acid. The murder matches the signature of "El Teo", one of Tijuana's most wanted drug lords. (Los Angeles Times photo by Don Bartletti)

A border patrol vehicle smoothes the sand so that the tracks of potential border violators are visible. New prefabricated stair railings have been installed along the Mexican border between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico, California. March 14, 2009. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Newly built fence on the US-Mexico border. Photo taken at dawn on March 14, 2009, between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico, California. The new 15-foot-tall (4.5-meter) barrier is installed on top of the sand dunes so it can be lifted and repositioned when migrating dunes begin to cover it. Almost seven miles (11 km) of such fencing were installed at a cost of $6 million per mile. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Numbered boxes containing evidence collected from multiple autopsies. Mortuary in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. February 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Corpses in a mortuary refrigerator in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Mexico, February 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

In the foreground is a .50 caliber rifle. In the background is a meeting on issues on the Mexican border. The meeting is attended by representatives of the US Department of Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs. Thursday, March 12, 2009, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Soldiers escort drug lord Hector Huerta-Rios to an air force base in Salinas Victoria, on the outskirts of Monterrey, northern Mexico. March 24, 2009: Hector, head of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, was captured by the military on Tuesday. He is accused of murdering the head of the Monterrey police. Huerta Rios was captured along with five of his associates. The arrested were found to have money and weapons. (REUTERS/Tomas Bravo)

Shot in the head by unknown assailants in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, March 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar)

A policeman searches a field after a shootout looking for weapons. Tijuana, Mexico. Monday, March 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

In 2016, Mexico ranked second in the world in terms of the number of violent deaths, second only to Syria and ahead of other leaders in this kind of anti-rating - Iraq and Afghanistan. Such data are presented in published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). IISS Director General John Chipman drew attention to an important fact: “The Mexican conflict is characterized by a lack of artillery, tanks and combat aircraft. Almost all the victims died from small arms or bladed weapons.” I was looking into the reasons for the surge in violence in this country.

Big redistribution

The report notes that the highest casualties are in states that have become “key battlegrounds for competing and increasingly fragmented drug cartels.” Gangs are trying to take over areas and territories controlled by their rivals in order to monopolize drug trafficking routes into the United States.

A striking example of such clashes is the conflict between two factions of the most powerful local cartel -. After the head of this syndicate, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman (Shorty), was behind bars in January 2016, his closest associate Damaso “Lawyer” Lopez tried to “squeeze” the business from the sons of the authority that had fallen into the hands of the police. However, Shorty's heirs - Jesus Alfredo and Ivan Archivaldo - were not going to give up the family business without a fight.

As a result, an internecine war began, in which about 500 people died on both sides this year alone. And although the Lawyer was seized by the police on May 2, law enforcement officers are sure that this will not stop the war. Firstly, the Guzman brothers will take revenge on the traitors who sided with Lopez. Secondly, El Chapo’s sons are forced to fend off attacks on the cartel, weakened by civil strife, from the Advocate’s competitors and allies.

Now it was a shame

The IISS report caused such a wide response that even the US President responded to it. IN Twitter he published a link to the material in which the document was discussed.

The Mexican authorities were seriously offended by the authors of the study and issued a joint statement. It states that according to the data, the number of murders in Mexico (16 per 100 thousand inhabitants) is much lower than in some other Latin American countries: in Brazil, for example, this figure is 25, in Venezuela - 54, and in Honduras a generally prohibitive 90 violent deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants.

Another counter-argument given by the Mexicans: many regions of the country are in no way affected by the drug dealers' showdowns and the tourist flow last year increased by nine percent. Therefore, comparing Mexico with Syria is absolutely incorrect.

“This report is a dubious work and a pursuit of sensation. Comparing the violence caused by the illegal drug trade to civil war is unfounded. Mexico, like many other countries in Latin America, faces real problems with homicide,” says Tom Long, a professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics. - These estimates are questionable. Half of the murders in Mexico do not appear to be related to the illegal drug trade.”

One way or another, in the ten years since the Mexican authorities declared war on organized crime, approximately 200 thousand citizens of the country have died, and another 30 thousand people have gone missing.

Recognition of America

“We Americans must realize that our country is the only market for this product. If it weren't for us, Mexico wouldn't have such a serious problem with organized crime. We need to understand that we are responsible for this,” the US Secretary of State admitted at a joint press conference with Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray. “We must be above shifting responsibility to each other and exchanging reproaches. We must understand that every demand creates supply and every supply creates demand. If the US and Mexican governments waste time arguing about who is to blame and whose fault it is, organized crime, which is killing people on both sides of the border, will only benefit,” the Mexican minister said.

According to US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, the first thing we need to do is end what lies at the root of the problem - the demand for drugs in the US. “If Americans realize that recreational drug use leads to the deaths of people in Mexico, Colombia or Central America, the murder of journalists, police officers, military officers, judges, then the profits of this criminal business will be significantly reduced,” he said.

Kelly argues that everyone will be involved in the program to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States: Hollywood, governors, mayors, families, priests. In his opinion, this can significantly reduce the income of drug cartels. “Until we do this, there will be a desperate struggle on the border,” he stated.

People are dying for gasoline

According to official data, about half of all violent deaths in Mexico occur in drug cartel battles. Regions through which oil and gasoline pipelines pass have become a new arena for clashes between various factions. Criminals cut into them and drain fuel. The cost of stolen fuel on the black market is two times lower than at legal gas stations.

The underground trade in gasoline and other petroleum products has flourished since last year's government decision to raise fuel prices by almost 20 percent. According to data from the national oil company Pemex, while 213 illegal taps were identified in 2006, last year this figure rose to seven thousand. The turnover of the stolen fuel market exceeded $16 billion.

The battle for such a jackpot could not do without victims. In the state of Puebla, for example, there were 185 murders in the first three months of this year—twice as many as in the same period in 2011, which saw the previous peak in violent crime.

Several large gangs are fighting for the division of the “gasoline pie”. They not only fight among themselves, but also wage real battles with federal forces. At the end of April, as a result of a special operation by Mexican security forces, one of the leaders of the criminal world of the state of Tamaulipas, Loisa Salinas, nicknamed Comandante Bull, was found in the city of Reynosa. Previously, his group specialized in drugs, but recently it has diversified its activities and was actively involved in developing the underground fuel business.

The bandits' answer was not long in coming. According to local police, the criminals blocked the roads with cars and set them on fire. At the same time, several retail outlets were burned down. The Ministry of the Interior appealed to citizens not to visit Reynosa due to the sharp escalation of the situation after the liquidation of Loisa.

Already on May 3, a new clash occurred between the bandits and the military. Ten people were killed, including four soldiers. “Today we are faced with a problem that has gotten out of control,” said state congressman Carlos Ignacio Mier Banuelos. The authorities responded to the new challenge in the traditional way: additional army units were brought into the state to strengthen the security of fuel lines. However, this only indicates that the state does not have a well-developed program to counter the new form of criminal business. “The army acts straightforwardly, without a strategy. The military uses only force,” Mier explained. According to him, as soon as the soldiers leave the region, the battle for gasoline will resume with renewed vigor.

According to experts, the underground fuel business cannot yet compare with the drug trade in terms of profitability, but is considered by local organized crime groups to be the most promising and fast-growing type of criminal profit. This means that fights between gangs will continue and will claim thousands of lives. As one Mexican expert said on this occasion, “violence feeds on itself: murder entails an inevitable response in the form of the same murder.”

Sharing my impressions of my trip to Mexico, I already wrote about its originality. I would also like to talk about the social landscape of the country, about its hardships and troubles in this area. You feel the special features immediately, even on the streets of Mexico City. They are always crowded: there are too many unemployed. There is a queue for unskilled work.

In the subway, airports, and shops, the floors almost shine - a whole army of cleaners wield rags more efficiently than any machine guns. In museums, instead of pensioners, as we are used to here, strong young guys sit as caretakers in the halls: at least you can earn some money. They also pay in the army, so there is no end to those who want it, especially from villages. And besides, there are many folk musicians, jugglers, acrobats, magicians, and beggars. Usually they stage a micro-performance at an intersection - they manage to run around a dozen cars with a hat, taking advantage of the fact that traffic lights change, not like us, rarely, sometimes after 3-5 minutes.

Or this scene: a skinny guy, naked to the waist, enters a subway car, spreads a rag with broken glass on the floor and lays down on it, first with his back, then with his chest, and then walks around the car with drops of not dried blood - can you not serve it?

Newspaper “wanted” sections do not hesitate to invite a bricklayer, a secretary, a painter for 600 pesos, although this is illegal, since the minimum payment is 1200 pesos per month (they write, supposedly for half a day). But what is typical is that foreigners will not be allowed near their workplaces.

Of course, what has been said applies only to the poor; the middle class, the “middle”, has completely different money. For example, a successful professor can earn more than 100 thousand pesos per month. The “scissors” are very significant, so it is unrealistic to give “cheap-expensive” estimates. The poor eat simply: flatbread, milk, beans, pepper, vegetable oil. And they drink a lot of Coca-Cola - 2-3 times more than Americans. As for alcohol, preference is given to beer. In addition to the fact that the heat is not conducive to strong drinks, tequila is also five times more expensive than our vodka.

The street party in the city center, in parks, and on university campuses is lively, free, colorful, and does not have the assertive speed and gloomy concentration of the morning human flows of European metro stations. The women are attractive, many can be called beauties, if not for the almost universal traditional spreading and weighting of figures down from the waist (however, other points of view are also legitimate).

Where there is poverty, there is lack of education. In the metro, pictures are required next to the names of the stations: “Medical Center” - a blue cross, “Juarez” - his portrait, “Balderis” - a cannon. This is for the illiterate; there are quite a few of them among the young (though even the literate like it - it’s generally human nature to say goodbye).

“We are turning this thesis around: where there is illiteracy, there is poverty. No matter how much you do good to the poor, the money will go into the sand, and an educated person will solve many problems himself,” says Cecilia Loria, Minister of Education and Culture of the state of Quintana Roo. Listening to the minister is not only interesting, but also pleasant, because Senorita Cecilia is also a charming woman with a Hollywood smile and tired eyes: “Education reform should go ahead of other reforms, as was the case in Japan and Germany after the war. There are almost 15 percent of Indians who do not speak Spanish, and our first task is to make education truly universal, with equal opportunities.We also care about quality, you saw in the school series the thick volumes of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, they are perhaps the most revered among us after Cervantes. Not everyone knows that we are the first in the world in the production of televisions and cars (“it’s begun,” I thought), there would seem to be a lot of jobs, but these factories are foreign, they don’t let us into hi-tech (that is, high technology), and profits go away from the country".

What is true is true. I tagged along with the President of the Congress of Metallurgists, Professor Tomayo, to fly for half a day to oil workers in the Gulf of Mexico, he advises them on underwater welding. The view from the helicopter is amazing! But that’s not what we’re talking about: the platform is Norwegian, the laying of pipelines is led by the Americans, and the “Papa Carls” are Mexicans. “And among our students,” says Cecilia, “the most prestigious specialty is “commercial engineer”: he has just enough knowledge to be smart, selling American goods - from computers to toilet paper. That’s why our wealth is 60- 70 percent is exported from the country unprocessed."

Something about Mexicans

There are 270 thousand students studying at the National University of Mexico, and 180 thousand at the Polytechnic Institute. Scale! But the trouble is that the “educators” themselves are not very educated: 70 percent of school teachers do not have a licentiate (primary university 4 years), and many university teachers have not completed the full course and do not even have a first academic degree (it sounds charming here - " maestro", not to mention "candidate of sciences"). There is no need to talk about doctors of science - all of Mexico produces fewer of them than the University of Texas at Austin alone.

Every new Mexican president certainly promises to defeat the country's two main ulcers: poverty and corruption. Poverty is visible to the naked eye. The highest echelons of society cannot be reached, but the fact that, for example, all rent is paid in black cash without deductions to the state, or that some professor works full time in three or four universities at the same time and does not appear in any of them, sending graduate students in return, is so This is not considered corruption in our country either. What should I write about?

But what really exists and goes hand in hand with these vices is crime. Unidads hire security guards, but the entrance doors to the apartments are still metal. Single houses are protected by intercoms and concierges (usually men). In the villas there are security guards, rottweilers, electronics, and live wires. And yet they steal and rob. But there is also a street. When your wallet is taken out of your pocket in a crowded subway or market, this can be understood and taken into account for the future. But when a bus is stopped in broad daylight right in the city and three or four young men “quickly, but slowly” rob passengers and the driver - how do you feel about that? I was warned, put money for shopping in a sock, I did this for two days, then I asked: “Don’t “they” know this?” Of course they do. Therefore, if you have a large amount, it is recommended to keep a “distracting” wallet with 200 pesos in a visible place (less likely to offend “them”) in several bills (so that it does not look like a bribe). Alas, “they” know this too.

Cars are not only stolen, but also taken away. I have already said that “red” can burn for about five minutes, and at this time a teenager approaches the car for alms, but suddenly opens the door (don’t yawn), two of his friends with knives appear nearby - a “change” occurs: they - into the car , you are on the sidewalk.

The sensitive topic of drugs here does not sound quite the same as in our media. “Yes, almost every day the front-page news is either the arrest of a major drug trafficker or the discovery of a secret tunnel under the border with Texas. Tens of thousands of drug couriers end up behind bars every year, and what changes? Not a single government can appease the handful of guerrillas (bandits?) of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala. Why? “Because billions of dollars are circulating in this business, and they end up where drugs are sold, in the States, that is. Their bosses subsidize our “national liberation front,” and if you read in the newspapers that the American authorities sent helicopters and instructors “to help” us, keep in mind that this is to control and protect drug highways. As for the drugs themselves, our ancestors regularly used marijuana as a sedative from a natural first aid kit. Remember, Mexico gave tobacco to the world, and the first smoker in Europe was Leonardo da Vinci, so that’s it.”

Big Brother is nearby

For the last seventy years, the country has been continuously, almost without alternative, ruled by the Party of Revolutionary Institutionalism (“you can’t trample against the PRI”). In the 1930s, especially under the strong President Cardenas, oil production was nationalized, social reforms were launched, and sharp statements were made about foreign policy independence. Everything is a great success. But time passes, the world changes, everything becomes boring. In recent years, PRI leaders have not been called anything other than “mastodons” and “gerontocrats,” and the National Activity Party, representing pragmatic businessmen, won the 2000 elections. Its leader, Vicente Fox, previously director of the Mexican branch of Coca-Cola, became its president for the next 6 years. His orientation towards his powerful northern neighbor is obvious. The president claims: “The election results are a mandate for reforms,” but he is not so free in his actions. Here's a recent scandal: the president was going to travel to the USA and Canada, but parliament objected, saying it was a waste of money, and he didn't go!

Relations between Mexico and the United States began to develop in the first quarter of the 19th century. In 1821, after 11 years of bloody struggle, Mexico's independence from Spain was proclaimed, and the United States was the first to recognize the new republic, effectively challenging all European owners of the West Indian colonies and the formidable Holy Alliance. Mexico appreciated the gesture; it tried in everything to imitate its neighbor, who won its independence 45 years earlier. The new republic began to be called the “United States of Mexico” (now there are 31 of them), adopted a constitution, declared universal equality of citizens, and curtailed the power of the church.

When Spain was significantly pushed back and weakened, friction began between neighbors. The energetically growing United States expanded to the west and south and at first was quite content with the de facto seizure of Mexican territories. American settlers colonized uninhabited lands, not too worried about trespassing borders and relying only on the power of their own Colt - it was in the 1840s that this multi-shot miracle came to the people, “making everyone equal.” But as soon as the Mexican parliament bucked, the cowboys bucked too. In 1847, the expeditionary force of General W. Smith (future US presidential candidate) landed in Veracruz and, almost unopposed, moved towards Mexico City. In the capital, near Chapultapec Castle, a “battle” took place with the cadet boys, during which one of them, wrapped in a Mexican flag, jumped out of the window in despair. Today the Monument to Children Heroes is one of the most visible and revered in the city.

According to the peace treaty, Texas and part of Upper California now de jure went to the United States - Mexico did not have the strength to fight for them any longer, and the government convinced itself that these desert lands far from the capital were not so attractive (who could have foreseen then, that oil will be discovered in Texas, and Hollywood in California?). In 1861, there was a new misfortune: England inspired Spain and France to get even with Mexico for the past. The timing was right: the United States was overwhelmed by the Civil War and they had no time to defend the Monroe Doctrine. And this time the expeditionary force repeated the “path of Cortes”: landing in Veracruz and marching to Mexico City. The republic was liquidated, and Maximilian, an Austrian Habsburg prince and author of a couple of books on the study of palace politesse, was installed as emperor.

But this time Mexico didn't go down. President Benito Juarez retreated with the army deep into the country, and then 33-year-old General Porfirio Diaz, the future famous dictator of Mexico for almost 35 years, stood out in his entourage. But things didn’t work out for the interventionists - there was something vaudeville-like in the idea of ​​bringing the monarchy from Europe to tropical America in the second half of the 19th century. England "jumped" from the event before it began, the Spaniards set sail a year later, the French - after 5 years. For the abandoned connoisseur of court etiquette, who blissfully believed in the love of his “subjects,” the time has come that is best characterized by the words “a hangover at someone else’s feast.” Vaudeville turned into drama: in June 1867, Maximilian and his wife Charlotte were shot by patriots in the Queretara hills.

Let us note that the United States, having completed its internal “showdowns,” began actively participating in the expulsion of the French in 1865. And after the Spanish-American War of 1898, when the United States took the Philippines and Puerto Rico from Spain, it became finally clear to the whole world, and Mexico too, who was the boss on the American continent. On the nightstand in my room is a luxuriously designed “Mexico,” published in Miami. The brief historical sketch contains the following sections: "Colonial Era - Independence - French Intervention - Revolution - Today." What about the war of 1846-48, in which Mexico lost half of its territory to the United States? I answer: history is not made by heroes or the masses; history is made by historians, in this case American ones.

In 1994, Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (TLCAN, or NAFTA, in English). Then the nationalists shouted about surrendering positions and loss of sovereignty. However, Mexico survived the 1995 financial crisis only thanks to US assistance.

It is believed here that Fox's presidency began the long process of Mexico's integration into the US economy. Americans are very supportive of Mexican resorts, which is why, in addition to the world-famous Acapulco, about fifteen years ago they began to upset Cancun specifically “for the Americans.” Now there are more than a hundred luxury hotels on the local coast. It's convenient to have a "fiesta" on hand, and there is a ferry here from Florida. “In return,” 15 million Mexicans, including seasonal workers and illegal immigrants, work in the United States. It is they, and not oil, that provide the main dollar income to the country.

But despite all this, Mexicans somehow surprisingly steadfastly maintain their racial identity. They know the history of the country quite well, they idolize their nature and difficult climate, they prefer tequila to other strong drinks, in families, even intelligent ones, Americans are called “gringos”, and “just Marys” do not strive to become Mary.

The drug mafia in Mexico is becoming more powerful. Although the overall murder rate in the country has been steadily declining over the past two decades, drug dealers are committing heinous crimes. They have undermined legal norms so much that ordinary Mexicans now and then publicly wonder: did the mafias actually win the war against the state?

The history of modern Mexican drug traffickers dates back to the 1940s, when farmers from the mountain villages of the Mexican state of Sinaloa began to grow marijuana. The first Mexican drug traffickers were a group of villagers connected by family ties. They were mostly from the small northern Mexican state of Sinaloa. This poor agricultural state, sandwiched between the Gulf of California and the Sierra Madre Mountains, about five hundred kilometers from the US border, has become an ideal location for smuggling. At first, marijuana was grown here or bought from other “gardeners” on the Pacific coast, and then the drug was transported to the United States. For decades it remained a stable and not too risky small business, and the violence did not spill out beyond the narrow world of drug traffickers. Later, cocaine was added to the smuggling of marijuana, which became fashionable in the 60s. However, for a long time, the Mexicans were just “donkeys” serving one of the channels for supplying Colombian cocaine to North America. And they didn’t even dare to compete with the powerful Colombians.

The rise of Mexican drug gangs began after the defeat of the Colombian drug cartels of Cali and Medellin by the US and Colombian governments. One after another, El Mehicano and Pablo Emilio Escabar were killed, brothers Ochoa and Carlos Leder (El Aleman) from the Medellin cartel were sent to Colombian and US prisons. Following them, came the turn of the Cali cartel, led by the Orihuela brothers.

Also, after the Americans closed the Colombian drug supply channel through Florida, the Mexican delivery route became virtually no alternative. The weakened Colombians could no longer dictate their will to the Mexicans and now only sell them large quantities of drugs at wholesale prices.
As a result, Mexican gangs gained control over the entire drug trade chain - from raw material plantations in the Andes region to points of sale on American streets. They managed to significantly expand the scale of their business: from 2000 to 2005, the supply of cocaine from South America to Mexico more than doubled, and the volume of amphetamine intercepted at the US-Mexico border fivefold.

The United States, largely due to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Mexican drug cartels, ranks first in the world in terms of cocaine and marijuana consumption. And the drug cartels themselves began to earn from 25 to 40 billion dollars a year on the American market. In general, Mexico produces about 10 thousand tons of marijuana and 8 thousand tons of heroin annually. Almost 30% of the country's cultivable farmland is planted with marijuana. In addition, almost 90% of the cocaine consumed in the States comes through Mexico. Mexican laboratories produce the majority of the methamphetamine consumed in the States (although a lot of meth used to be produced - four times more pseudoephedrine was imported into the country than was required for the pharmaceutical industry, and now the focus is on marijuana, which provides almost 70% of the cartels' income). All this is sold through controlled distribution points that Mexican drug cartels have in at least 230 major American cities.

However, this expansion of business also affected the relations between the leading Mexican cartels. The multiple increase in the possibility of supplying cocaine and marijuana with a fixed number of plazas (transshipment points on the border) and the number of drug addicts in the States led to a sharp increase in inter-cartel competition for the American market. It's time for big money. And big money, as we know, brings big problems. This is how drug wars began in Mexico, because “if in legal business there are standard legal methods of competition, then in illegal business, the most effective way to get around a competitor is to kill him.”

At first, families who had fled Sinaloa began vying for control of the main border transit points. Accordingly, the structure of the cartels itself has undergone changes. If in the old days, a drug mafioso was a guy with a gold tooth and a Colt 45 caliber, now everything is completely different. Now there are entire groups of militants trained in a military manner. To fight each other, cartels began to create private armies consisting of mercenaries - sicarios. These mercenaries are armed with the latest technology and often surpass even parts of the Mexican army in technical equipment and level of training. The most famous and violent of these groups, Los Zetas. Its core is former Mexican special forces from the GAFE (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales) unit. In the model and likeness of Los Zetas, their competitor, the Sinaloa cartel, created its own army called Los Negros. There was no shortage of recruits: the cartels openly posted advertisements in towns bordering the United States, inviting former and current military personnel to join their organizations. Cartel vacancies became one of the reasons for mass desertion and dismissals from the Mexican army (from 2000 to 2006 - 100 thousand people).

The first major war between rival drug cartels began with the arrest in 1989 of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the founding father of the cocaine business in Mexico, a friend of Jose Rodriguez Gacha (El Mexicano). This contributed to the fragmentation of his group and the founding of the first two major drug cartels - Sinaloa and Tijuana. Then the unexpected appearance of a group with no connection to Sinaloa added fuel to the fire. They were drug traffickers calling themselves the Cartel del Golfo, from the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas. People from Sinaloa were divided: some were for the new players, some were against. When the cartel formation in Mexico was completed, they split into two parts: one group consists of the Juárez Cartel, Los Zetas, Tijuana Cartel and Beltrán Leyva Cartel, and the second group from the Cartel del Golfol, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel La Familial. . Later, two more were formed - the Oaxaca Cartel and Los Negros.

And ordinary Mexicans were clearly shown a new way of waging drug wars when a group of men in black walked into a roadside disco in the state of Michoacán and shook out the contents of a garbage bag - five severed heads. A new era of Mexican drug trafficking has begun, when violence has become the means of communication. Today, members of the drug mafia monstrously disfigure the bodies of their victims and put them on public display - so that everyone realizes the power of the drug lords and fears them. The You Tube site has become a propaganda platform for the drug war, where anonymous companies upload videos and drug ballads praising the advantages of one cartel leader over another.

The United States, as you know, is not only the main drug market, but also a source of weapons used in drug cartel fights in Mexico. Almost anyone with a driver's license and no criminal record can buy a weapon here. 110 thousand sellers have sales licenses, 6600 of which are located between Texas and San Diego. Therefore, for the purchase itself, Mexicans usually use fake Americans - “straw people” (mostly single mothers who do not arouse suspicion), who receive $50–100 for the service. These fake people buy guns individually either from stores or at “gun shows” that are held every weekend in Arizona, Texas or California. Then the barrels are handed over to dealers, who, collecting a batch of several dozen, transport it across the border. And they make good money from it. For example, a used AK-47 can be bought in the States for $400, but south of the Rio Grande it will cost $1,500. Armed in this way, drug cartel armies have mortars, heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, and fragmentation grenades.

Mexican border guards themselves cannot stop weapons traffic. Or rather, they don’t want to. Mexicans are not particularly active in searching cars entering their territory from the north, this passivity is explained by the fact that border guards are faced with the choice of “plata o plomo” (silver or lead). Many people prefer to take bribes and turn a blind eye to smuggling. Those who refuse "silver" usually do not live long. For example, in February 2007, an honest Mexican border guard detained a truck full of weapons. As a result, the Gulf Cartel was missing 18 rifles, 17 pistols, 17 grenades, and more than 8 thousand rounds of ammunition. The next day the border guard was shot dead.
Until 2006, periodic mafia clashes had virtually no effect on ordinary Mexicans. The cartels were big business, and big business requires a quiet environment. Drug gangs have even become an everyday part of citizens' lives. Ordinary people, seeing the success of drug dealers (especially against the backdrop of total poverty in the country), began to compose “drug ballads” about them. Since Mexico is a very religious country, the cartels even have their own “drug saint” - Jesus Malverde, whose central temple is installed in the capital of the state of Sinaloa, the city of Cualican, and the “drug saint” - Doña Santa Muerte.

There was no large-scale violence in the country. The cartels interacted with Mexican President Vicente Fox according to the formula “Live yourself and don’t interfere with others’ lives.” Everyone controlled their own territory and did not interfere with others. Everything changed with the victory of Felipe Calderon in the 2006 presidential elections. Immediately after his election, the new head of state declared war on the drug cartels. The president took such a radical step for two reasons. First, he needed to launch some kind of popular campaign to strengthen his position after the controversial election results (Calderon's lead over his closest rival, Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, was less than 0.6%). Of the two potential popular directions - the war on crime and the beginning of deep economic reforms - he chose the first as, in his opinion, the easiest. Secondly, the new president realized the danger of coexistence between cartels and the state. Calderon realized that continued “See No, Hear No” tactics against drug cartels would inevitably lead to a weakening of the government. Every year the bandits penetrated deeper into government institutions, primarily the police.

By the time Calderon arrived, the entire police force in the northern states of Mexico had been bought by the cartels. At the same time, law enforcement officers did not fear for their future if their connections with bandits were revealed. If a local policeman is fired for corruption, he simply goes across the street and is hired to serve by the cartel (for example, in Rio Bravo, the Los Zetas recruiting office was located directly across from the police station). Former police officers know the principles of police work from the inside, and they were gladly hired. That is why the authority of the police in the country was very low.

As a result of an active campaign, Calderon managed to inflict some damage on the drug mafia. During 2007–2008, 70 tons of cocaine, 370 tons of marijuana, 28 thousand guns, 2000 grenades, 3 million cartridges and $304 million were seized from the cartels. In the USA, this resulted in its own indicators: cocaine prices soared by one and a half times, while the average purity decreased from 67.8 to 56.7%, and the cost of amphetamine on American streets increased by 73%.

After the new president violated the unspoken truce, the drug cartels declared a vendetta on the government and security forces and are waging it with their characteristic cruelty and intransigence (for this reason, two sworn enemies, the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels, even reconciled for some time). Those who did not run away and sell out are mercilessly shot. Briefly, the chronicle of the most significant victories and losses looks like this:

In January 2008, in the city of Culiacan, one of the leaders of the cartel of the same name, Alfredo Beltran Leyva (nickname El Mochomo), was arrested. His brothers, in revenge for his arrest, organized the murder of Federal Police Commissioner Edgar Eusebio Millano Gomez and other high-ranking officials in the Mexican capital itself.
Also in January, members of the Juarez cartel pinned to the door of Juarez City Hall a list of 17 police officers who had been sentenced to death. By September, ten of them were killed.

On October 25, in the prestigious Fracionamiento Pedregal district of Tijuana, troops and police stormed a villa located here, arresting the leader of the Tijuana cartel, Eduardo Arellano Felix (nickname “Doctor”), after which leadership of the cartel passed to his nephew, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano.
However, after the arrest of Eduardo Arellano Felix, one of the leaders of the drug cartel, Teodoro Garcia Simental (nickname “El Teo”) left the group and started a war against its new leader, as a result of which Tijuana was swept by a wave of violence that, according to various sources, killed from 300 to almost 700 people . Within a year, rivals fought for control of the road running through Nogales, Sonora, and the number of murders in that city tripled.

In November, under strange circumstances, the plane of Juan Camilo Mourino, the presidential national security adviser, crashed.

And in early February 2009, one of the most popular Mexican military officers, retired General Mauro Enrique Tello Quinones, was kidnapped, tortured and killed. Less than 24 hours before his abduction, he took up the post of security adviser to the mayor's office of Cancun, a resort town and one of the drug lords' recreation centers.

On December 16 of the same year, in a shootout with soldiers of the Mexican Navy, one of the leaders of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, Arturo Beltran Leyva, died, and on December 30, in the city of Culiacan, law enforcement agencies detained his brother and one of the leaders of the drug cartel, Carlos Beltran Leyva.

On January 12, 2010, one of the most wanted Mexican drug lords and leaders of the Tijuana drug cartel, Teodoro Garcia Simental (nickname “El Teo”), was caught in the state of Baja California.
In February, the Los Zetas cartel and its ally the Beltran Leyva cartel began a war against the Golfo cartel in the border city of Reynosa, turning some border towns into ghost towns. It was reported that a member of the Golfo cartel killed the Zetas' top lieutenant, Victor Mendoza. The group demanded that the cartel find the killer, but he refused. Thus, a new war broke out between the 2 gangs.

On June 14, members of the rival Zetas and Sinaloa cartels carried out a massacre in a prison in the city of Mazatlan. A group of prisoners, having seized the guards' pistols and assault rifles through deception, broke into a nearby prison block, committing reprisals against members of a rival cartel. During this and at the same time, in other parts of the prison, 29 people died from riots.

On June 19, in the city of Ciudad Juarez, the mayor of the city of Guadalupe Distros Bravos, Manuel Lara Rodriguez, who was hiding there after receiving threats against himself, was shot dead, and ten days later, the criminals killed the candidate for governor of the northwestern state of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre Cantu.

On July 29, the military discovered in the suburbs of Guadalajara the location of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Ignacio Coronel, and during the ensuing shootout he died. That same month, in the municipal area of ​​Tamaulipas, the military raided a ranch where suspected drug cartel members were located and four people were killed in a shootout. While searching the area around the ranch, the Mexican military discovered a mass grave (the bodies of 72 people, including 14 women).

On August 30, the authorities managed to arrest the influential drug lord Edgar Valdez (nicknames Barbie, Comandante and Guero), and in early September, following operational intelligence information, a special unit of the naval forces in Pueblo arrested one of the leaders of the drug cartel "Beltran Leyva" Sergio Villarreal (nickname "El Grande").

The next major success of Mexican law enforcement agencies was the arrest of the head of the Los Zetas drug cartel, Jose Angel Fernandez, at the Cancun resort.
A few days earlier, on November 6, during a shootout with the military in the city of Matamoros, one of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel, Ezequiel Gardenas Guillen (nickname of Tony Tormenta), was killed.

On December 7, they managed to detain one of the high-ranking members of the La Familia drug cartel, Jose Antonio Arcos. And the next day, hundreds of police and military personnel entered the city of Apatzingan, where La Familia is based. And with the support of helicopters, for two days they fought with armed members of the drug cartel, during which several people died (civilians, militants and police), including the head of the La Familia drug cartel, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez (nickname “Mad”).

On December 28, in the city of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, unknown persons kidnapped the last policeman remaining here, after which the city was left without police, and in order to ensure law and order, the authorities sent troops to the city.
On January 18, 2011, near the city of Oaxaca, one of the founders of the Los Zetas cartel, Flavio Mendez Santiago (nickname Yellow), was arrested.

On June 21, during a raid near the city of Aguascalientes, in the state of the same name in central Mexico, police detained the drug lord of the La Familia drug cartel, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas. The following month, in the state of Mexico, police arrested another of the founders of the Los Zetas cartel, Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar.
In total, since 2006, 26 thousand people have become victims of this conflict. For comparison, the number of Soviet military deaths during the 10 years of the war in Afghanistan was 13,833. Twice smaller!!!

Currently, there are nine main drug cartels operating in Mexico: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, the Golfo Cartel, the La Familia Cartel or La Familia Michiocana, the Beltran Leyva Cartel, the Los Zetas Cartel, the Los Negros Cartel and the Oaxaca Cartel. You can read more about each of them by clicking on the links with the names of the cartels.

And a little about Russians, in this interesting topic:

Mexican drug cartels use members of Russian organized crime groups, as well as former KGB officers, to smuggle drugs into the United States and also to increase their influence in the region.

Luis Vasconcelos, head of the Mexican Attorney General's Office of Organized Crime, claims that "the Russians are highly professional and extremely dangerous."

Russian mafiosi help Mexican drug traffickers launder money. This was stated by the head of the intelligence department of the American Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Stephen Casteel. For their services, the Russians take 30% of the money laundered.

Casteel argues that the rise of Russians in Mexico is linked to the globalization of organized crime. For the first time, fighters from Russian “brigades” appeared in Colombia and Mexico in the early 90s, but their finest hour came a little later. After the arrest of the head of one of the largest drug cartels in Mexico, Benjamin Arellano Felix, as well as several dozen of his assistants, the cartel began to rapidly disintegrate. University of Miami specialist Bruce Beigley claims that it was then that Russian mafiosi gradually began to infiltrate the fragments of the once powerful organization.

"Russian militants are much cooler than the Mexicans. They are much more brutal. They do their job silently and try not to show off unnecessarily. They don't wear gold chains, don't cut people with chainsaws and don't throw them into rivers," says Bagley. "Don't underestimate them. These guys are the cruelest people you can imagine."

Bagley claims that the latest Mexican police operations, which have effectively "decapitated the Mexican drug cartels," provide the Russian mafia with a "golden opportunity to operate in Mexico." A large cartel is breaking up into small armed groups that operate at the state and city level in Mexico. There they are more difficult to identify, and it is easier for drug traffickers to bribe local officials. Small groups of Mexican drug traffickers welcome the Russians with open arms.
The Russians carry out most of their money laundering operations in various offshore zones - Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The Russians escort large cargoes of drugs that are transported to the United States. In April 2001, American coastal police seized a ship with a cargo of 13 tons of cocaine and a mixed Russian-Ukrainian crew.