Stories from Mexico

Here are three recent stories on Mexico’s troubles that are worth reading in full:

The Los Angeles Times ran a story on Richard Padilla Cramer, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who then spent over two decades working for U.S. Customs on the Mexican border. To his colleagues, friends, and family he was the ultimate warrior against the drug smugglers, having worked undercover, busted corrupt officials, and held an important diplomatic post in Mexico. Now it is Cramer who stands accused of corruption and will stand trial for having secretly been himself a drug mafioso.

Writing in The Atlantic, Philip Caputo, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and author of A Rumor of War, ventured south of the border to see Mexico’s war for himself. Everyone is now counting on Mexico’s army to fight the war Mexico’s police long ago abandoned. But Caputo hears rumors that the army may now be in the drug business as deeply as any cartel is. Caputo reports that in Mexico it is dangerous to know, let alone say, the truth.

Finally, at FPRI, George Grayson, one of the leading scholars on Mexico’s drug violence, writes about the rise in self-organized defense, aka vigilantism, in Mexico. Some such groups have come out in the open. Grayson predicts that vigilante self-defense organizations in Mexico will soon become a major growth industry.