SECSTATE Kerry - Latin America Relations (and Drugs)

What about John Kerry, the new SECSTATE? Here's one piece of advice for Secretary Kerry, but it's advice that Kerry's master, President Obama isn't likely to agree with:

En su nuevo cargo de secretario de estado norteamericano, John Kerry tiene una gran oportunidad para compensar el desinterés con el que Obama trató a América Latina durante su primera presidencia. Como veterano observador de los asuntos de América Latina, creo que las principales prioridades de Kerry en la región deberían ser: (1) revivir un enérgico programa de libre comercio, (2) aumentar el apoyo que presta Estados Unidos a las instituciones que hacen cumplir la ley en países plagados por la violencia como Honduras y Guatemala, y (3) hacer de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) un vehículo más efectivo para promover y defender la democracia. Esas iniciativas enviarían señales positivas a los aliados y asociados democráticos de Washington. (Jaime Daremblum -- fue embajador de Costa Rica en los Estados Unidos) 

A friend of mine who works for USGOV explained the US ambivalence toward Mexico this way: It's difficult to get people to notice trouble in their own backyard. It's just tough - sort of like not cutting your own lawn because the neighbor across the street is shooting porno movies with the windows open.

President Otto Perez Molina

Secretary Kerry will continue to hand-hold with the authoritarian governments in Latin America because President Obama is more comfortable with them than he is with those governments who trend on the democratic side of politics. At the moment, George Soros (think what you will of him) is spending a lot of time in Guatemala, sleazing around with President Otto Perez Molina. Soros' official position is that he wants to combat illegal narcotics trafficking. If that's his intent, perhaps Perez Molina isn't the best of people to do it with because the esteemed president has been strongly alleged to be a major precursor dealer with Mexican drug cartels, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion being the foremost. Maybe that's only in his past? Perhaps he has reformed and reinvented himself.

Even though Secretary Kerry doesn't seem to know it (yet), there are tense times coming for the Republic of Mexico as President Enrique Pena Nieto stands at the helm of the Mexican ship of state. That ship will be running over a lot of rocks and shoals this summer as they fight established drug cartels, all the time managing the drug business themselves more and more outside of traditional narco circles (with the intent of avoiding violence). It's like dancing on quicksand with a pogo stick. If Kerry and the Obama Administration link themselves too closely with the Mexican regime, they could very easily be accused of drug dealing themselves as the US closes on the 2014 mid-term elections.

The US is unlikely to give any serious attention to Latin America under an Obama Regime  (see the porno movie analogy above) because the President and the NSC is focused on Africa and the Middle East.

Full-Auto AK-47's for Sale

Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion has been under a lot of pressure. Ruben Osegevera Cervabtes) (El Mencho) joined with Gonzalo Inzunza Insunza (Macho Prieto) to fight -- just about everyone else. Macho Prieto lost all of M1's crew to the new Arellano Felix Cartel (managed by Joaquin Guzman Loera's sons and Fernando Sanchez Arellano jointly) so he has lost control of his border plazas. 

Based on what I have heard, even though San Luis Río Colorado has fallen to the new Arellano Felix Organization, Macho Prieto still has the stroke to smuggle loads across to the US side of the fence (Yuma). That infrastructure usually involves complicit US Customs officials and sometimes ICE Agents to grease the skids. 

AK-47

While there is profit in narcotics, the shelves of gun stores in America are empty and Macho Prieto will be moving many of the excess firearms that El Mencho has amassed over the past three years. Even though Nicolas Balcazar Lopez (El Bronco) remains in the custody of the PGR, awaiting trial in Mexico City, some of the weapons that his network purchased from the US Government through straw buyers (BATFE-Operation Fast and Furious) may be headed back north. If you buy something for X and you can sell it for X times twenty, it's time to sell. They're American market firearms anyway. Almost all of them are semi-automatic and not of much use to the cartels, which practice spray-and-pray tactics.

In addition to selling the US their firearms back, they are also going to be moving full-automatic AK-47's (mostly NORINCO manufacture), and magazines. They bought them from the Chinese for $3.00 per magazine and Senator Dianne Feinstein, President Obama and Vice President Biden have been bidding them up on the marketplace to $75.00 per high capacity magazine. The NORINCO AK-47's, purchased by container load for under $300.00 each will sell on the street in the USA for $8,000.00 each. It's a good business for the cartels, which have been accused of taking arms from the USA. As one cynical narco told me --  it's time to give back. 

It's a whole new market. In the past, selling drugs meant that the narcos needed to deal with unreliable users. The thriving arms consumption in the US is driven by "Ma and Pa" on the farm who fear their government. Dealing with generally honest people with jobs is something that Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion is trying to get accustomed to, but they expect the pressure from the newly re-innaugurated President Obama to be kept up, thus the demand will only increase for new - still in the packing grease AK-47's. Sadly, there are only about 1,200 firearms sold by BATF to sell back, but the profit is there, so why not sell?

With over 300 million firearms in private hands in the US, the cartel-smuggled weapons will amount to a mere drop in the bucket in terms of numbers, but US policy is helping to keep the cartels employed. For Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, it means a lot because they have fallen on hard times and need all the help that they can get to keep the operation funded.

Rumor only: The Russians and Palestinians are both dumping container loads of SKS style weapons on the cartels to be sold to US consumers. They're effective but dated. They'll sell like hotcakes in the US.

I'm not selling or offering to sell these illegal firearms. I'm just the blogger keeping you readers updated on current trends.

Gun Smuggling from Mexico to the US

Rev. Jesse Jackson (Famous American racial advocate) recently suggested on MSNBC that the 500+ murders in Chicago in 2012 were attributable to firearms smuggled 1,300 miles from Mexico to the Windy City.

Rev. Jackson: "These guns come from the suburbs and from Mexico." The advocates of gun control keep ranting about firearms being shipped wantonly from the US to Mexico.*

*While it has always been debatable how many of Mexico's weapons come from America, we do know that well over 2,000 were delivered to the drug cartels courtesy of the US Department of Justice through Operation Fast & Furious and that those firearms were the source of over 300 deaths in Mexico.

Officially, Mexico's homicide rate in 2008 was 2.4 times greater than that of the US.** Brazil's homicide rate is 4.2 times greater. However, those statistics are artificially lowered for the sake of reporting, because the real numbers would be shocking and would deter tourism. The body count from President Calderon's war on drugs that everybody in Mexico knows to have been an abject failure, is now estimated at 120,000. That's a far different number than the artificially low "official" number - 50,000.

**The homicide rates as reported in the 2011 Global Study on Homicide, conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime shows that the latest reportable numbers come from 2008.

However, there is cause for hope and change that will improve the Mexican economy yet again. Because of soaring firearms prices in the US due in large part to efforts by both President Obama and Vice President Biden to promote a 'run on firearms' in stores, many cartels are planning to ship firearms north. There is a market in the US now that was not there in the past. Both Los Caballeros Templarios and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion are in the process of buying more firearms from sources in the former Soviet Union and China principally with the intent to satisfy the demand generated by President Obama's policies.

Even though many Americans feel that tougher laws will prevent smuggling, the tough laws now in place don't stop thousands of TONS of methamphetamine and cocaine from being shipped from Mexico into the US today. If you can ship a ton of meth, you can ship a ton of AK-47's. Where many Americans would not purchase drugs, the lure of inexpensive (compared to prevailing rates in gun stores) firearms and 7.62x39 ammunition opens up an entirely new market.

The US could solve this budding problem by not artificially increasing the 'street price' of firearms, but the Obama Administration doesn't see it that way. Their concept of "gun free zones" is backfiring with unintended consequences. 

Christmas LCT Narco Offensive

Ruben Osegevera Cervantes (El Mencho), leader of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) invited his bitter rivals from Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT) (formerly La Familia Michoacan - allegedly destroyed by the Mexican Government) to a Christmas dinner in Jalisco. He hired a popular band and made arrangements with caterers for the huge fiesta. However as with these sorts of things, the word got out that he planned to assassinate his rivals after wining and dining them. 

LCT launched an offensive against CJNG in Colima, capturing the town of Villa de Juarez today (located near San Jose de Gracia) and possibly also the port city of Manzanillo, which has changed hands between drug organizations at least ten times in 2012. The Mexican Army (SEDENA) has sent a few desultory troops to observe. Most of them would really rather be in barracks over the holidays, drunk to the gills on old pop-skull.

NH-500 E2 from Fuerza Aérea Mexicana

It was a warm day for a fight today with a high of 91(F) and a low tonight of 57 (F). Scattered clouds made it possible for Fuerzas Aérea Mexicana, Fifth Air Group, flying Bell 212's to keep an eye on the drug war from above. High enough so that the narcos wouldn't take pot shots at their hueys and MD500's. (technically NH-500's, transferred from the Italian Air Force)