Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? 1st Edition by George W. Grayson (PDF)

Description

* Mexico was named an Outstanding Academic Title of 2010 by Choice Magazine.Bloodshed connected with Mexican drug cartels, how they emerged, and their impact on the United States is the subject of this frightening book. Savage narcotics-related decapitations, castrations, and other murders have destroyed tourism in many Mexican communities and such savagery is now cascading across the border into the United States. Grayson explores how this spiral of violence emerged in Mexico, its impact on the country and its northern neighbor, and the prospects for managing it.Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled in Tammany Hall fashion for seventy-nine years before losing the presidency in 2000 to the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Grayson focuses on drug wars, prohibition, corruption, and other antecedents that occurred during the PRI’s hegemony. He illuminates the diaspora of drug cartels and their fragmentation, analyzes the emergence of new gangs, sets forth President Felipe Calderi?1/2n’s strategy against vicious criminal organizations, and assesses its relative success. Grayson reviews the effect of narcotics-focused issues in U.S.-Mexican relations. He considers the possibility that Mexico may become a failed state, as feared by opinion-leaders, even as it pursues an aggressive but thus far unsuccessful crusade against the importation, processing, and sale of illegal substances.Becoming a failed state involves two dimensions of state power: its scope, or the different functions and goals taken on by governments, and its strength, or the government’s ability to plan and execute policies. The Mexican state boasts an extensive scope evidenced by its monopoly over the petroleum industry, its role as the major supplier of electricity, its financing of public education, its numerous retirement and health-care programs, its control of public universities, and its dominance

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a very interesting book, with excellent material and lots of valuable information. It definetely shows that the author has done extensive research on the subject, and it provides a good overview of the historical elements that led Mexico to this violent war, and the role the United States has played.There are, however, several mistakes. Some are simple factual errors, one of them already in the first page, some simply grammatical errors and misspelling of spanish phrases. One upsetting aspect is that chapter 1 has a section missing, probably due to a printing error, so one parapragh cuts off on one page, and the following page begins a whole new section. You may want to wait until a new corrected batch is printed, or a new edition is published.Other than that, I recommend the book for anyone interested in learning the basics of the Mexican Cartel wars.

⭐I bought this book for a graduate-level course, Drug Politics in the Americas, and if I could give it a zero-star rating, I would. In the acknowledgments at the beginning of the book, the author makes a tongue-in-cheek comment about his cat adding content to the manuscript; upon reading it, I have to wonder if he should credit the cat as co-author and/or editor, because it was terrible. There was no structure to the book to help the reader make sense of it; the author jumped around from one topic to the next and name-dropped so many cartel members (each of whom has at least three names plus a cutesy nickname) that it was impossible to keep any of them straight, even after reading the same passage multiple times. From the title of the last chapter, you would expect it to be about the author’s assessment of the likelihood of Mexico becoming a failed state; instead, it’s more about his recommendations on where to go with the drug war, and the afterward is where he actually touches upon the failed state issue. The book was replete with odd wording, names mentioned twice in one paragraph but with different spellings each time, wrong words (one example: a sentence used “help” instead of “held”, which made no sense), and erratic use of punctuation. I was left with a strong desire to attack the book with a red marker and send it back to the author or his publishers, but I won’t waste my time reading this mess a second time. Hands down, the worst book I’ve been assigned in my graduate program.

⭐Although, I think the title seems a bit of a hyperbole, I’m a third done with the book. Although its a bit dry at times, I can applaud the author on his scholarly penmanship. With good sourcing and accurate historical factual data the author seems to have put in a fair bit of effort in researching.

⭐after wading through chapter after chapter of statistics i gave up half way and donated it to the library book sale

⭐Not well written and I did not even finish it. No comparison with El Narco which was superb which I had read first.

⭐this book is excellent for anyone who want to know where the current drug war in mexico stands and what has happened.

⭐Great copy. Awesome delivery time. Just as described!

⭐This scholarly work is very useful in providing an understanding of the ongoing conflict between the disparate cartels and the Mexican state. Grayson provides a context for this conflict by discussing the anatomy of the illicit economy itself and how it frames the current conflict, the origins of the trafficking of illicit substances, the cartels and their predecessors, and how changes in the political system of the Mexican state had a profound influence on the development and evolution of the criminal organizations that are the cartels of today. Grayson makes clear that the burgeoning power of the cartels, violence, corruption and myriad other problems in Mexico exist on a societal level and stem largely from the incomptetence and culture of corruption of the Mexican government.The bulk of the book is a narrative of the activities of the cartels, problems beleaguering the Mexican state (which stem largely from failings in governance), how the perpetuation of these problems are potentially symptomatic of state failure, and the Mexican governments’s response to these issues. In response to the ever-increasing magnitude of these problems, the Mexican government has embarked on a campaign to reform on a previously unseen scale. Grayson provides a critique of policies adopted by both the US and Mexico in response to these problems.Grayson also discusses in detail the cartels themselves: their structure, constituents, modus operandi, territories and the way they interact with each other, the state and the citizenry. These cartels have grown immensely wealthy from cocaine trafficking and as a result wield a dispropotionately great deal of power. Their wealth has allowed them to develop drug production infrastructure, purchase vast amounts of weapons and corrupt law enforcement and public officials.Mexico has been divided into a mosaic of warring cartels, who compete with the state and each other for dominance. The power of the cartels has increased to the point where some directly challenge the state for control, highlighting the danger the Mexico is in of becoming a failed state. In the case of these cartels, there seems to have been a natural progression from organized crime to terrorism to insurgency. This shift in tactics was catalyzed by the continued accrual of power, a direct result of massive revenue generated by trafficking illicit goods. The steady influx of money into the funds of the cartels as a result of this trade is used by the cartels to bankroll conflict: weapons, vehicle and communications equipment procural, recruitment, training and hiring of mercenaries (GAFES, Kaibiles). These assets, procured via money, are utilized to combat the Mexican law enforcement and military forces as well as rival cartels directly; to assert and maintain their dominance in territories under their control; and to coerce the general populace both physically and psychologically. The cartels have also adopted a population-centric approach. They either attempt to gain support largely through public works projects or pro-cartel, anti-rival, anti-government propoganda, or attempt to coerce the populace via mass murder, extortion, kidnapping, bribery and terrorism. They have also expanded their operations into many of America’s major urban centers, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco. This upsurge in power and violence has, amongst other things, led to the militarization of Mexican drug policy enforcement.Actions of foreign entities such as the US government and Colombian cartels are also shown to have a significant impact of the situation in Mexico throughout the years: the US through its foreign policy and counternarcotics operations; the Colombian cartels, as primary suppliers of cocaine, through their responses to counternarcotics operations and their business transactions with the Mexican cartels.The problems in Mexico are shown to be complex and multifaceted and have a direct impact on American national securtity. The majority of major drug trafficking routes run through Mexico into the US, who is the primary consumer. In addition to importing drugs and precursor materials from a host of foreign countries in order to sell primarily in the US, the Mexican cartels have constructed their own drug production and distribution infrastructures, which exacerbates the problem.I found this book to be extremely informative. Grayson provides a context and a history that allows those unfamiliar to the enormous complexity and implications of the conflict for control between the Mexican state and the narco cartels. He also shows why what is going on in Mexico is important (or should be important) to both the average citizen, especially those in urban centers with significant narco activity and border areas, and policymakers in the US. Better maps should have been included. 5 stars for the tremendous informative value, 3 for the read.NOTE:*on page 30 Grayson states that “The “live and let live” ethos that enveloped these activities [activities of the narcos] began to change in the 1980s and 1990s when oppertunities to make vast fortunes mushroomed because of changing routes for cocaine trafficking – a phenomenon that coincided with an upsurge in PAN electoral victories.” Shifts in trafficking routes as a result of the reorganization of law enforcement agencies and their jurisdictions under the PAN, granting these authorities greater autonomy and increasing their propensity for corruption by narco dollars, may have had some influence on the profitibility of cocaine trafficking, but Grayson omits the primary contributing factors to the vast increase in profitability: a surge in demand in America for cocaine after the introduction of crack cocaine to American urban centers, and that this increase in profitability was compounded by the Reagan administration’s subsequent anti-drug legislation.According to Bruce and Hayes in Hostage Nation: Colombia’s Guerrilla Army and the Failed War on Drugs, “In the early 1980s, the white powder [cocaine] that had once been a white-collar drug exploded into American inner cities in the form of crack cocaine. By 1985, the use of cocaine among young adults reached an all-time high with over 8 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 and 6 percent of those between the ages of 25 and 34 admitting to the use of the drug. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan called drug abuse “a repudiation of everything America is” and implored Americans to join the “national crusade against drugs.” With the increasing fervor over the issue, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (378-16) in favor of a $1.7 billion Omnibus Drug Bill.” (“Hostage Nation” page 47)The impact of these factors on the profitability of cocaine trafficking was twofold:1) per supply and demand, the surge in demand for cocaine and its derivatives in America as a result of more widespread use stimulated the increase in profitability2) The US government’s response to the upsurge of drug use was more or less an extension and expansion of Nixon’s “War on Drugs”. The Reagan administrstion increased the degree of illegality of drugs via the the “national crusade against drugs”, passed the Omnibus Drug Bill and further emphasised the supply-side approach. These new measures further compounded the revenue generated from cocaine trafficking. Illegality increases risk which increases price which, given that demand is fairly constant, increases profitability. It is in this way that there is a direct relationship between illegality and profitability. “Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.” (Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate economist)Therefore, to attribute the increase in profitability of cocaine trafficking only to changes in trafficking routes as a result of PAN reorganization of law enforcement structure as Grayson does on page 30, and to not address the significant upsurge in crack cocaine consumption in the US and the subsequent anti-drug legislation and its effect on demand, is inaccurate and misleading. This assertion by Grayson allows him to level criticism more directly at the Mexican state and its complicity in the debacle it currently finds itself in.

⭐This book is almost unreadable because of the over abundance of detailed information about criminals of interest only to law enforcement and perhaps academics. It draws strange parallels between the structure of the Roman Catholic church and criminal families.Of course there is some interesting information contained in a sea of irrelevance to the ordinary non-specialist reader and in the end concludes that the only remedy against drug trafficking is decriminalisation and perhaps legalisation without providing much justification for a proposal that is likely to exacerbate the problem rather than diminish it.The book is very expensive and one should think long and hard before purchasing it;I was hugely disappointed in the book and cannot recommend it to other than very determined and specialist students of the drug world.

⭐Si bien el título del libro alude en la pregunta a una realidad irrefutable (en el sentido de que el mexicano es un Estado fallido), el autor sesga sus opiniones y plantea solamente una cara de este complejo y añejo problema: la producción y el traslado de drogas (con su gran dosis de corrupción, participación de autoridades, problemas conexos, etcétera) y hace un detallado catálogo de participantes del otro lado del Río Bravo (el mexicano); poco menciona de la otra cara de la moneda: el consumo. Porque para que haya producción, necesariamente debe haber consumidores. Alguna vez se le echó en cara al expresidente mexicano Gustavo Días Ordaz (de tan triste menoría) que México era un enorme trampolín para el tráfico de drogas, a lo que aquel respondió (palabras más o menos): “Correcto. Pero si México es el trampolín, forzosamente debe haber una alberca”. Tampoco se puede pasar tan fácilmente por alto la participación de los norteamericanos; si no, que nos platiquen un acerca del caso “Rápido y furioso” o el ataque que sufrieron algunos de sus representantes en la carretera México-Cuernavaca.Me entregaron en tiempos y fue de manera oportuna me encanto que me atendieran muy rápido. Muy bueno y voy a recomendar la página de amazon México.

⭐

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