Mexican Forces Kill Nation's Most-Wanted Cartel Boss | Hacker News Reader

Mexican Forces Kill Nation's Most-Wanted Cartel Boss

nytimes.com

97 pointsdownboots44 comments

Puerto Vallarta is on fire - seeing tons of videos on my timeline.

Apparently as "retaliation" from the cartel because their boss was killed. Where do you draw the line?

At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

When is enough enough?

Deciding is one thing, carrying out the decision is another. The Mexican government and security forces have been heavily compromised by the cartels for years. Some of the smaller law enforcement actions are a form of "kayfabe". Even if President Sheinbaum gives the order, there may not be enough honest and loyal personnel to carry it out.

Mexico is a failed state. We can argue about who bears responsibility but that is the reality today.

I don't think that's possible in Mexico. There's too much power in the logistical networks that move things into the US. The demand is too great. Even if you kill every drug trafficker and gang member alive today and create huge prosperity the void will be filled by someone and they will be adversarial to the government and they will have to use extra judicial violence to enforce their position.

The cartel's presence in Mexico is extremely muted relative to their power.

Just purely as a hypothetical thought exercise I wonder how infiltrated the US gov is by cartels.

Probably none.

I grew up in Mexico--spending a few years in or near Puerto Vallarta, specifically, funnily enough--and the M.O. of the cartel is overwhelmingly geared towards keeping a VERY low profile. Their whole purpose is to be quiet and subtle.

For every "loud" cartel action in MX, there are twenty that you never see, and then ten that exist as different recyclings and exaggerations and attack ads in the US to (now) perpetuate the current administration's favorite scapegoat, or (then) to prevent people from emigrating from the US.

It's been like that since '07 or so: take a story from Ciudad Juárez or Tamaulipas, then magnify it and convince Americans that the entire country is like that, so that they don't pay attention to the fact that they could get cheaper healthcare, out of pocket, by driving across the border to an equally well-equipped hospital... than they would for the cost of a single ambulance ride in the States... while living in a house that cost 10-100 times more than a house of the same size and quality across the border. All the while, the cartel hums happily along, truly wanting absolutely nothing to do with you.

Fear sells, and fear controls. Just like whatever series of headlines got you wanting to believe that they've infiltrated the American govt. ;)

Not much if at all at the national level. US government is infiltrated by other harmful entities, drug trafficking can't compete with MIC, Big Oil, Sugar, Pharma, government contractors etc

Cartels are the largest non-state owned business operations in Mexico.

They’re overdue. Sheinbaum and other administrators probably didn’t act until now because they’re serving at the cartel’s pleasure. Now with America pressuring them, they’ve finally acted. But if they can’t bring the country under control, it’s going to sink the country and its legitimacy. You can’t have criminals burning airports, school buses, and grocery stores (things I saw videos of earlier).

What if the destabilization of Mexico was the goal so that the US could justify military intervention?

This isn't 1846. Mexico is our largest single trading partner. Spending our own lives and treasure to babysit an unstable nation on our Southern border is in fact the last thing the US (whoever you're asking) wants.

What's the alternative then, if the baby refuses to get its shit together?

That's the pressing question, watching the truth social meltdown following the supreme court tariff decisions really has allies wondering if the US system has functional guardrails and if the will to bell the cat exists sufficiently to exercise them.

> At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

The point for doing that was some time ago. It's like Islamists. They're so sophisticated that it makes more sense for governments to treat them like foreign military threats than domestic police issues. Don't listen to the "human rights" people in developed countries that became safe and stable by doing these exact same tactics hundreds of years ago.

In Bangladesh in 2016, there was a terrorist attack in a cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2016_Dhaka_attack. The government then went full Bukele on the Islamists. There hasn't been a significant terrorist attack in the country since then.

The "human rights" thing reminds me of El Chapo. They put him in jail, he escapes, and so on. Seeing how he's not even a US citizen, there's a very obvious solution here.

> Part of Bukele’s truce is to allow gangs to run their networks within the prisons, while their wealth and power remain untouched. In exchange, they have to keep homicides and violent crimes down. The leader of Barrio 18, one of the country’s two most powerful gangs, also alleges that they helped Bukele rise to power directly.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/bukele-trump-gangs/

How does this usually work - they just set some cars on fire to prove a point and demonstrate they are "doing something" and then just switch to the next boss that comes out of the secession fight ? Or is it more complicated or nuanced ?

Hi! I live in Guadalajara (City that was also on fire that day). They burn cars and big trucks to complicate the transit for the authorities and try to make more complicated to send reinforcements

At least that is what the people that is supposed to be more "informed" says

As long as Mexico shares a border with the US the biggest consumer of such recreational drugs and poverty in Mexico there will always be drug cartels.

It is basically whack-a-mole killing or imprisoning cartel heads - there will be splinter factions and you will just get three just as nasty ones in it's place.

Agreed, it’s a demand-side problem. The profit potential is so great that someone will smuggle drugs into the US, no matter the risk.

There's always huge demand for illegal things, doesn't mean a such a powerful market forms

Most-Wanted Cartel Boss so far

Horror vacui

Honestly probably not even that. Past most-wanteds were probably more querido.

I imagine that if the U.S. assisted in any meaningful way ala the search for Escobar in Columbia we probably would have heard it by now.

From TFA:

The Mexican government said the United States had contributed intelligence that aided the operation against Mr. Oseguera.

Colombia*

The US confirmed they’re involved. They provided intel, and there’s speculation the Mexican Army was also using american weapons.

And thousands more will die due to the fully predictable and justified retaliation that follows. This doesn't meaningfully weaken the cartels, but forces them to respond in order to not compromise future safety.

Prioritizing showy executions over actual progress, words that should describe the cartels, not the government.

> justified retaliation

I don’t see how it would be justified. Do you think the cartels are in the right here?

He probably sees them as marginalised POC bravely feeding their families under the thumb of American imperialism.

> Do you think the cartels are in the right here?

Of course not, none of the sides are at all in the right here. But from the cartels perspective, they're almost certainly in the right.

Drug cartels are entirely the result of poor policies, and the blame for all the harms caused by them rests primarily on the shoulders of those perpetuating those policies. Surely the politicians that vote for laws that directly enable drug cartels to exist in the first place must be worse than the leaders of any individual drug cartel?

Any kind of serious analysis of who's more right would end up being a work at the scale of Rising Up and Rising Down, that's probably best avoided.

If we oversimplify cartels into innocent businessmen just looking to sell drugs, with governments being the ones that introduced violence into the equation in their effort to stop them? Surely it must be the cartels

If we oversimplify cartels into evil criminals just looking to wield power over other human beings, with governments just trying to liberate people from cartel tyranny? Surely it must be the governments

Drug cartels are entirely the result of poor policies, one of which is that the Mexican government has not been punishing the cartels. Maybe they're fixing that.

> But from the cartels perspective, they're almost certainly in the right.

Sure, but so is basically everyone. ISIS is in the right and justified then, too.

Also, coalition didn't get rid of ISIS by negotiation or something. They used bombs and, in one advisor's words, entrenching tools.

> Sure, but so is basically everyone.

Well, sure! The crucial difference between cartels and ISIS is that the cartels are in it to make money, ISIS is an ideologically motivated nation-building project.

The cartels disappear when the activity becomes unprofitable, ISIS does not.

The cartels tend to use violence when it's profitable, ISIS will use violence because they believe that an imaginary man wants them to do so.

You could legalize and regulate their drug-related business, paying a small amount of taxes will probably be more attractive than maintaining a private military in the long term.

Alternatively you can fight like this, barely dent the cartels and instead cause massive amounts of suffering for the regular people who live in the middle of it all? If you actually cared about improving things rather than making a show, surely you'd want to pursue policies that (a) actually help you get rid of the negative influence of the cartels and (b) avoid collateral damage by not forcing the cartels to retaliate.

> not forcing the cartels to retaliate.

What do you mean forcing? They are organized crime, this is what they choose to do. The right thing for them to do is turn themselves in.

How do you expect the cartel to subside and eventually dissolve? Policies that encourage them to play nicely?

>What do you mean forcing? They are organized crime, this is what they choose to do. The right thing for them to do is turn themselves in.

Self preservation. Turning themselves in would be antithetical to that. To expect anyone to sacrifice themselves would be absurd.

The only reason the government is only occasionally assassinating individual leaders instead of fighting open war against the cartels is that the cartels are willing and able to impose unacceptable costs in retaliation. It would be suicidal to not retaliate.

>How do you expect the cartel to subside and eventually dissolve? Policies that encourage them to play nicely?

Policies that eliminate their sources of revenue.

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