But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. \”Cartel war\” does not explain the story my friend, and Juarez journalist, Sandra Rodriguez told me over dinner last month: about two children who killed their parents \”because\”, they explained to her, \”they could\”. The culture of impunity, she said, \”goes from boys like that right to the top – the whole city is a criminal enterprise\”.
Not by coincidence, Juarez is also a model for the capitalist economy. Recruits for the drug war come from the vast, sprawling maquiladora – bonded assembly plants where, for rock-bottom wages, workers make the goods that fill America\’s supermarket shelves or become America\’s automobiles, imported duty-free. Now, the corporations can do it cheaper in Asia, casually shedding their Mexican workers, and Juarez has become a teeming recruitment pool for the cartels and killers. It is a city that follows religiously the philosophy of a free market.
Eh?
Governments are spending hundreds of billions to prevent the drugs market being a free market.
And therefore the violence and murder of the drugs market is a result of it being a free market?
What?
It is a city that follows religiously the philosophy of a free market.
Given that philosophy includes a prerequisite for property rights and means of enforcing them, I doubt it.
“Governments are spending hundreds of billions to prevent the drugs market being a free market”
Well quite. Surely the problem arises from the existence of a state monopoly on the ‘legitimate’ production of substances controlled via the UN charter which – violently enforced – can only be broken by force, enabling violent cartels to obtain a monopoly on the ‘illegitimate’ production and supply.
There’s not a free market in sight.