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In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

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Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#81

Post by stickfigure »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

I'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident we…

Holy moly. For anyone else wondering what kind of vehicle this is, here's pictures of the aftermath:

https://twitter.com/Abramjee/status/1388195293565489156

Another camera angle of the ambush, shows what's going on:

https://twitter.com/eNCA_BBateman/status/1389839622914510849

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#82

Post by edgyquant »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #36
alex-wallish wrote: post #3

why do humans do this sort of thing?

Part of what's going on in Mexico is that the cartels have spread romanticized images of themselves to the point where many Mexican youngsters actually aspire to cartel life. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcocorrido

Indeed when El Chapo was arrested there were loads of memes going viral about how good he was to the poor. I do believe this is somewhat factual (not El Chapo but drug lords in general) but they tend to be equally or even more cruel to those who don’t bow to their whims.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#83

Post by strken »

dvt wrote: post #9
ALittleLight wrote: post #4

If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs. Setup compounds to securely house the police forces. Change the policy to "balazos, muchos balazos".

> If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Legalize murder? The problem is not only complex on a local scale (city or country), but there are geopolitical pressures at play as well. Cartels tend to be very populist, often funneling money back in their communities making them (paradoxically) better. On the…

It's making a gamble that legitimate drug companies operating with their own security forces and the support of the government could out-compete cartels in both security and economics.

I think it would work absent external pressures. A drug company that can openly operate on the highways and ports, pay for its own helicopters and operate its own militia for security, and call in the police and army at need, has a significant edge over a cartel operating covertly. Unfortunately, a legitimate company would at the very least not have access to the North American market, which would stop it competing with the cartels.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#84

Post by atatatat »

atatatat wrote: post #13
haolez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politicians are probably much less powerful than the cartels (if they are not allies). To try to pass a bill to decriminalize all drugs would probably fail and get you killed.

Multiple Mexican Presidents in the last few decades have been shown to be CIA assets, so

Since HN downvotes before searching these days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16195392

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#85

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

gonzo41 wrote: post #46
qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

I'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident we…

So what you're observing is the process in which states originally asserted themselves as sovereign in the first place. Ie with a ton of violence. Say in ~20 years if those states failed, and Narco states were born out of them, eventually they'll establish a version of governance and im sure sure the cycle would continue.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

First, just because the state loses its monopoly doesn't mean some other entity gains a monopoly. In Mexico, cartels aren't just fighting the state, they are also fighting each other. If the state collapsed, they will continue fighting each other, and the people of Mexico will effectively live in a semi-permanent warzone.

Second, not all violent entities are created equal. Cartel members are motivated by greed and lust for power. Many are willing to employ tactics such as torture and terrorism to advance those goals: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mexican-drug-cartels-new...

I'm not claiming every cop is a saint, far from it. There is certainly room for improvement in the US at least. However, bad cops are newsworthy because we expect better from our cops than our gangsters. On a statistical basis, a much larger fraction of the police force is motivated by a desire to protect and serve the public. And our police forces are subject to at least nominal democratic accountability.

If due process requirements don't meaningfully differentiate cops from gangsters in your eyes, we might as well do away with them anyways.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#87

Post by philwelch »

alex_sf wrote: post #14
dvt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Legalize murder? The problem is not only complex on a local scale (city or country), but there are geopolitical pressures at play as well. Cartels tend to be very populist, often funneling money back in their communities making them (paradoxically) better. On the…

The reason cartels need to murder people at all is because the business is illegal and there is no justice system to mediate disputes. F500 CEOs aren't doing drive-bys on each other over patent infringements because they can just sue.

That might have helped if they did it decades ago. At this point, there are plenty of other victimful crimes—human trafficking, protection rackets—to keep the cartels in business.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#88

Post by totalZero »

chirau wrote: post #56
ttul wrote: post #7

At some point, Mexico ought to be considered a failed state…

I am not quite sure you understand the definition of failed state. What do you understand the term to mean? Mexico is far far far away from being a failed state.

Mexico has a decaying monopoly on the use of force, not only because the cartels are violent, but also because the police apparatus itself has been corrupted. This would certainly qualify as one of several traditional criteria for a failed state.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#89

Post by edgyquant »

ilaksh wrote: post #79
alex-wallish wrote: post #3

why do humans do this sort of thing?

I think it comes down to economics. Countries are not islands. Poor countries and poor neighborhoods create a situation where people legitimatize criminal gangs. Many men may see that as the only way to gain any power. In a country with more money, more opportunities and a vietual police and military monopoly on force the situation is different. We have many, many prisons in America. But think about what it was like…

Not even just power, I grew up in a fairly poor neighborhood (in the US) and most of my friends were pretty poor. The guys who sold weed or harder drugs had a lot more money to spend than those who worked legitimate jobs as teenagers. When you’re given the option of working a job that doesn’t respect you and then going to college so you can make a few thousand a month seven years from now or selling drugs and getting that plus respect now it isn’t hard to see why people choose the latter. And that’s in the US in the developing world the choice is more be poor and maybe work in agriculture, take a chance and moving far away and maybe finding a decent job or getting into a gang where you can take care of your family now.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#90

Post by papito »

edgyquant wrote: post #57
gonzo41 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're observing is the process in which states originally asserted themselves as sovereign in the first place. Ie with a ton of violence. Say in ~20 years if those states failed, and Narco states were born out of them, eventually they'll establish a version of governance and im sure sure the cycle would continue.

There was an old (facetious) John Stewart bit where he said the cheapest way to defeat (iirc ISIS) was to not fight them at all but let them get bogged down in having to actually govern. Obviously ISIS is an extreme example but I do think this method could be applied in a way to cartels. I’m not up to date on the situation but I do know that Columbia officially ended its civil war in 2019 with the FARC becoming a pol…

ISIS did actually govern. They had their own DMV.
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