NarcoTerrorists or NarcoParamilitaries: What is the Threat Facing Mexico ?

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Infobae

                      Narco-terrorists or narco-paramilitaries: what is the threat facing Mexico ?
Former military members who became drug traffickers, criminals who use terrorist tactics and more combinations: the Cartels have become an almost indecipherable threat.

Narco-terrorism and narco-paramilitarism are two concepts that in recent weeks have featured in the headlines of all Mexican newspapers. After the murder of nine members of the LeBarón family and the failed capture of Ovidio Guzmán López , national and US politicians have suggested that the cartels should be considered terrorist organizations.

The president of the United States, Donald Trump , said Tuesday that his government will designate these criminal organizations as terrorist groups. His position is clear: drug traffickers adopt terrorist tactics to promote their ends, instilling fear among the population. The violence to which they subject to the citizenship meets, even partially, the criteria for it to be considered terrorism.

There is a group of analysts that suggests that the drug cartels are actually paramilitary groups, while they have a complex armament, and their lines are formed by former soldiers , who defected to the Army and joined the criminal groups that in a Start should fight.

In 2008, the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) itself was forced to recognize that in those last seven years, more than 100 thousand soldiers had deserted and in many cases, had swelled the ranks of criminal groups, mainly drug trafficking The specific case is "Los Zetas" , an armed arm of the Gulf cartel, which even recruited elite personnel from the US Air Force.

From both sides there have been arguments and counterarguments to reinforce the idea that Mexico has been overwhelmed by organized crime and has even opened a new chapter in narco-violence, which could well derive a designation as a terrorist cell.

Narco-paramilitaries or narco-terrorists, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera considers that both terms are misused in the Mexican case. In interview for Infobae Mexico, the professor at George Mason University and author of the book "Los Zetas Inc.", said that none of these concepts defines the situation of cartels in the country.

To be a terrorist group, cartels should have a political or social motivation. However, his main interest remains economic. That is why for the analyst the statements of national and US politicians are out of context, trying to match the tactics of drug cartels with terrorist organizations .

Although their practices provoke terror, it must be clear that they extort and exert that violence as part of their business model, not with a political purpose. In contrast to Hezbollah, which attacks civil society to have an impact on the government and send a message, the political issue here does not exist.

Designating the cartels as terrorist organizations could result in the total militarization of the country.

The insistence of equating the cartels with terrorist organizations carries a great risk to the country, which is summed up in one word: militarization. Therefore, Cabrera is emphatic in stating again and again that care must be taken with the creation of terms that do not adhere to reality.

The confusion comes from the indiscriminate use of the word Cartel , which has been diluted to such an extent that today it is used generically to describe any criminal organization, even if it does not engage in drug trafficking.

Organized crime has referrals that go from extortion to kidnapping and many of them are cells, that is, they do not represent the total part of the criminal group . “They have slippery slopes; some of those who participate where the LeBarón family is engaged in extortion, others in drug trafficking, ” the analyst recalled. He added that, so far, the investigation into the massacre of the Mormon family has not been well conducted. “We do not know well, there is no good research, there is no will to apply justice. In the LeBarón case, the poor coordination and communication makes doubt of many things , and it is not necessary to forget that still the person in charge is not determined ”.

The attack on the LeBarón family was the last trigger. As Mexican-American citizens, the neighboring government has pressured the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to resolve the case, promising to intervene if necessary . Meanwhile, the survivors of the attack issued a formal request for Washington to consider the cartels terrorist organizations.

            U.S. Army soldiers placing a wire fence near the Mexican border (Photo: Reuters)

The request, if fulfilled, would bring great repercussions that would even lead to US intervention in national territory . "What would cause the cartel to call terrorist groups would be that it would give the country (USA) a white letter to intervene in Mexico ," Cabrera said.

The most conservative and militaristic side in the United States is pushing the agenda to make it happen, “the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) are spreading, especially in Texas, propaganda that equals cartels with terrorist groups without sticking to the definition of agencies, ”he warned.

The State Department, the FBI and various international organizations are very clear that in order to be considered a terrorist, the organization must have a political or social motivation. It is not enough to use terror strategies , you need a common goal. That the cartels prioritize economic interest isolates them from this definition.

Narco-paramilitarism: a support from the State

              Hundreds of former Mexican military have swelled the ranks of organized crime

Former military who became drug traffickers; It is a scenario reproduced in Mexico for decades. At some point, the judicial forces considered more lucrative to join the crime than to fight it. With Army weapons and training received by the US agencies themselves , certain cartel cells appear to have surpassed the government. What happened in Culiacán after the failed capture of Joaquín's son "El Chapo" Guzmán is an example of this.

This scenario that reproduces tirelessly could suppose that one lives in a state of narco-paramilitarism in Mexico, where the instrumentation of violence and the articulation of a capacity to finance communities in their basic needs before an inaction of the State have granted them the power to criminals to govern in parallel to the official regime.

However, the true strength of a narco-paramilitary group comes from its link with the government . This was explained by Correa-Cabrera, saying that, no matter how much a criminal group that uses military tactics would only enter the definition of a paramilitary if it were "fed by state forces and supported by it."

Narcoparamilitarism implies a control of the illicit economy of drug trafficking in the territory, which the government allows in exchange for certain tasks delegated to these groups so as not to stain the image of the Army. In the analyst's words:

This criminal group collaborated with the federal government during the presidency of Felipe Calderón 

Some of them are hired by state forces to commit acts of enforced disappearance. There are alliances with the State, such as "Los Mata Zetas", who collaborated with the Navy in the fight undertaken by Felipe Calderón.

Michoacán is another state in which there has been presence of paramilitary groups. However, its isolated existence and the diversification of its criminal activities annuls the possibility of talking about narco-paramilitarism in Mexico. In any case, according to Cabrera, one could speak of criminal paramilitarism.

“ Some time ago some criminal organizations had links with the State . You have to see today which ones keep it, but you can't typecast all criminal organizations in the same concept. This is very dangerous and is irresponsible when the characteristics are not analyzed, ” he added.

Given the indiscriminate use of these concepts, the only thing that is clear to Cabrera is that Mexico is experiencing a terrible problem of insecurity and organized crime violence, in which there is a danger of militarizing the country entirely.