Bad News: More women join cartels

By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal

Remember 17 years ago, December 2006, when then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his “drug war” against the cartels?

Has it made a difference?

Sure, the cartels are richer.

Plus, there are now more cartels than pre-December 2006, there are more drugs flowing across the border, and the drug traffickers are more violent than ever as they continuously fight to control the turf so important to the shipment of contraband. In comparison, today’s Mexico makes 2006 Mexico, pre-drug war, look like a peaceful paradise.

According to a report published last year by the Council on Foreign Relations, “Mexican authorities have been waging a deadly battle against drug cartels for more than a decade, but with limited success. Thousands of Mexicans — including politicians, students, and journalists — die in the conflict every year. The country has seen more than 360,000 homicides since 2006, when the government declared war on the cartels.”

One has to ask, who was it that encouraged Calderon to launch the war against the narcos?

If you said, Uncle Sam, give yourself a gold star. On the wrong side of so many wars, the feds, with feckless George “Mission Accomplished” Bush Jr. in the White House, encouraged the Mexican president to take a more aggressive approach to the drug cartels.

Too many drugs are flowing into the U.S., we were told. The War on Drugs worked so well in the U.S., why not try it in Mexico?

As a result, the U.S. government provided Mexico with significant financial and logistical support for the war on drugs.

In fact, the United States has provided Mexico with billions of dollars in security and counternarcotics assistance since the Mérida Initiative was launched in 2007. The Mérida Initiative is a bilateral program that aims to help Mexico combat organized crime and drug trafficking, AKA, enrich the pockets of the few. As of 2022, the U.S. has appropriated over $3.3 billion in funding for the Mérida Initiative.

Female Narcos

More tax dollars wasted, but it’s only money. Plus, look what we got for our efforts — record amounts of serious drugs flowing our way — fentanyl, etc. — and the drug cartels, at least the top four, more powerful and rich than at any previous time in history.

Logic back then told anyone with even half a brain that if the Mexican federales splintered the biggest drug cartels, with the help of U.S. tax dollars, what would come out of that would be far worse, and so it has.

In 2006, there were approximately six top Mexican drug cartels, including the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. Today, according to multiple sources, including the Wilson Center (“Mexico’s Criminal Groups: A Landscape of Fragmentation and Adaptation,” 2020) that number is estimated to be more than 200.

From six to 200. What a deal. According to the Wilson Center’s report, the criminal landscape in Mexico is now more fragmented and complex than ever before.

In approximately 2006, I mentioned to a friend that it looked like Mexico was growing more violent. He said, “It’s really only in four places.” I said, “Yeah, north, south, east, and west.”

Now comes word out of Mexico from Vice.com, which is an international news organization that produces video, written, and social media content, that more women are joining the cartel party.

According to Vice (great name), “an increasing number of women are becoming part of Mexico’s cartels and criminal groups, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group, bolstering the violent hold organized crime had on the country’s communities and further exposing young children to criminal recruitment.”

Sad story excerpt: “The reasons that women get into organized crime such as drug-dealing or paid killing tends to be much the same as men’s - both for the money as well as for the empowerment and status. But the impact on society tends to be different, especially in a region where the lion’s share of childcare tends to fall to women. If mothers end up behind bars, their children are also more likely to, says the report, and tend to emulate the choices their mums make and status they earn working for the cartel.”

Meaning, it’s a vicious cycle. Mom goes to jail, which only increases the likelihood that her kids will turn to crime as well, if only to survive: “When I went [to prison], my youngest son was 10. … When he came to visit me, I had nothing to give him. … We would see the other families eating at the tables next to us and we didn’t even have a soda. One day he came to visit me very happy and showed me that he had $15 to buy me whatever I wanted. I started to cry, and I asked him, ‘What have you done, son?’ He just hugged me and told me, ‘What I had to do to buy you a proper meal in here’. … That was when I knew he had started working as a hitman. He was 14 years old,” one woman told the researchers.

According to the Vice.com story – More Women Than Ever are Joining Cartels – dated Dec. 1, 2023, what the International Crisis Group’s report failed to mention is the growing leadership roles that women are playing in the world of Mexican drug cartels.

Trouble is, they’re smarter, on average, than men, so this can’t be good.

Let’s send another approximate $600 million to Mexico, which the U.S. did last year. That will fix the problem.

So it goes.