Cartels Disadvantage
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Cartels Disadvantage – Table of Contents
Summary.............................................................................................................................................. 2
Glossary............................................................................................................................................... 3
First Negative Construction (1NC) Shell ....................................................................................... 4-6
Uniqueness Extensions
AT: Non-Unique – Drug Violence Increasing Now ................................................................................ 7
Link Extensions
AT: No Link – Surveillance Fails to Solve Crime ................................................................................... 8
AT: No Link – Drug Surveillance Fails to Curb Cartel Power ................................................................ 9
AT: Link Turn – War on Drugs Causes Cartel Violence ...................................................................... 10
AT: Link Turn – Plan Reduces US Capacity ....................................................................................... 11
AT: Alternative Causality – Poverty Causes Drug Cartel Violence...................................................... 12
Impact Extensions
AT: Impact Turn – Drug Cartels Help Economy .................................................................................. 13
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Summary
The Cartels Disadvantage describes a negative side effect to the Affirmative plan. The Cartels DA
establishes the War on Drugs as a program that is succeeding at limiting the proliferation and abuse
of drugs within the United States. It maintains that success in the War on Drugs is key to preventing
violent crimes, including those committed by cartels. Furthermore, to prevent cartels from expanding
and continuing to thrive, we must allow for the continued use of surveillance that has been used
effectively in the past to curb the expansion of cartels. The evidence makes it clear that the impact of
drug cartel violence can rival or exceed the impact of major wars in loss of life and cultural impact.
Other pieces of evidence maintain surveillance is uniquely able to prevent organized crime such as
human trafficking within the United States. The Cartels Disadvantage also provides evidence that
surveillance inhibits the ability of cartels to collaborate with major terror organizations. While
conceding that the War on Drugs has not been perfect, the evidence also shows that prison
populations and racially motivated crimes have decreased while the War on Drugs has occurred.
Lastly, the evidence highlights that drug cartels have had significantly more negative impacts on
impoverished citizens in Mexico, and that the cartels do not contribute significantly to the Mexican
economy.
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Glossary
Border Patrol – the Department of Homeland Security agency that attempts to prevent the entry of
undocumented immigrants and other persons on the border
Cartel—an organization created to regulate the supply of a good with the goal of limiting competition
Drug Cartel—a criminal organization that primarily participates in illegal drug markets but may also
engage in human smuggling, kidnapping, oil theft and other crimes. Examples include Los Zetas and
the Sinaloa Cartel
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – the US agency tasked with solving drug trafficking
Counter-Narcotics—measures used to combat drug trafficking
Drug Trafficking—The illegal trade of drugs
Drug War/War on Drugs – the term referring to a set of strategies Mexico and the United States
currently use to fight drug cartels. These strategies tend to be militaristic, including military aid and
the capture of cartel members
Enrique Peña Nieto—the current President of Mexico
Force Multiplier – something that significantly increases the potential of an action or policy
Hegemony—political, economic, and or military dominance
ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency tasked with immigration policy
Insurgency—violent rebellion against government authority
ISIS surveillance – in this file, ISIS surveillance refers to a surveillance system, not the Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria
Kingpin – the leader of a crime organization
Oil Shock –a fast and significant change in the oil market
RGV – the Rio Grande Valley, an area monitored by the Border Patrol
SOD – Special Operations Division, a part of the Drug Enforcement Agency that does covert
information gathering primarily surrounding drug trafficking
Trafficking—the illegal trade of something
Transnational – in more than one country
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1NC Shell (1/3)
A. Uniqueness – Drug cartel violence is decreasing—trends are optimistic, but continued
success is key to stop persistent, violent crimes.
Gomez, USA Today Reporter, 2015
(Alan, USA Today Reporter, April 30th, After years of drug wars, murders decline in Mexico, USA
Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/30/mexico-drug-war-homicidesdecline/26574309/)
Murders in Mexico fell for a third straight year in 2014 — the most pronounced declines
occurring along the U.S. border — a sign the country is slowly stabilizing after gruesome drug
wars. There were 15,649 people murdered in Mexico in 2014, a 13.8% reduction from the previous
year and down from a peak of 22,480 in 2011, according to a report set to be released Thursday by
the University of San Diego's Justice in Mexico Project. The reductions were steeper along the U.S.Mexican border. Five of the six Mexican states that border the USA reported a combined drop
of 17.7% in the number of homicides. "These data really help to underscore that we're talking
about a sea change in violence," said David Shirk, co-author of the report and director of the
Justice in Mexico Project, a U.S.-based initiative to protect human rights south of the border. "You still
have elevated levels of crime, so we still have a long way to go. But there is improvement, and we
have to acknowledge that improvement and understand why it's happening so we can try to further it."
The reduction in homicides does not mean Mexico has completely solved its security problems.
Maureen Meyer, senior associate for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America, said
Mexicans still face extremely high levels of kidnappings, extortion and other violent crimes. American
travelers have also been attacked. The U.S. State Department issued a warning April 13 that said
U.S. citizens continue to be victims of carjackings, robberies and other violent crimes. Meyer said the
overall reduction in murders is an encouraging trend that allows Mexican officials time to
cement improvements in the judicial system, anti-corruption programs and police practices.
She said the government must "make sure that the space opened by having less violence leads to
structural changes to Mexico's institutions to guarantee a strong rule of law in the future."
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1NC Shell (2/3)
B. Link – War on Drugs surveillance is necessary to stop drug cartels – surveillance has been
behind major past successes.
Beith, author on the Drug War, 2013
(Malcolm, former journalist who has provided commentary on the Drug War to multiple media outlets,
A Single Act of Justice, Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2013-0908/single-act-justice)
The effects have been remarkably positive. In reshaping the war on drugs to support the war on
terrorism, the United States found a better way to fight both. Take, for example, the rise in
prosecutions of drug traffickers in the past decade. During the 1990s, the United States managed
to extradite only a handful of alleged drug traffickers from Mexico; since 2001, the U.S.
government has brought hundreds of drug-trafficking offenders north of the border for trial. In
many of those trials, the defendants were members of terrorist organizations. In 2001, for example,
U.S. federal prosecutors indicted Tomás Molina Caracas, an alleged commander of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), for conspiring to produce and distribute cocaine in the United
States. By treating the FARC as a terrorist organization that also engaged in drug trafficking,
the case became a model for future prosecutions. At the time, then Attorney General John
Ashcroft said that the indictment represented "the convergence of two of the top priorities of this
Department of Justice -- the prevention of terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use -- in a single
act of justice." In 2006, a single indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
named 50 high-ranking members of the FARC, and alleged that it supplied more than 60
percent of the world’s cocaine. Prosecutors again emphasized the nexus between narcotics and
terrorism. DEA operatives have also found success in penetrating the international networks
where drug trafficking and terrorist activity intersect. Between November 2007 and March 2008,
confidential sources working with the DEA and posing as members of the FARC arranged to buy
millions of dollars in weaponry from international arms dealer Viktor Bout, ostensibly to use against
U.S. helicopters in Colombia. The weaponry included 800 surface-to-air missiles, more than 20,000
AK-47s, and five tons of C-4 plastic explosives. In 2009, another set of confidential sources -- also
posing as members of the FARC -- arranged a deal with a trio of Malian traffickers and militants to
transport cocaine through West and North Africa and to use the profits to support the activities of al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. U.S. officials quickly apprehended the traffickers, extraditing
them to the United States to stand trial. Further, it was a DEA confidential source who first
uncovered an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington on October
11, 2011. Posing as a member of the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, the source claimed to have
discussed executing the plan on behalf of Iranian agent Manssor Arbabsiar. The DEA has benefitted
from larger changes in U.S. intelligence-gathering procedures through the DEA Special
Operations Division, which comprises two dozen partner agencies, including the FBI, the CIA,
the NSA, and the IRS. Internationally, the DEA has reaped the rewards of increased flexibility
regarding wiretapping by host nations. In some instances, however, its surveillance activities have
caused diplomatic tussles involving foreign politicians linked to the drug trade itself.
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1NC Shell (3/3)
C. Impact – Drug cartel-caused violence results in levels of suffering that rival those of major
wars.
Blake, JD University of Michigan Law School, 2012
(Jilian N., former Analyst for the Department of Defense and current owner of and lawyer at Blake &
Wilson Immigraiton Law, Gang and Cartel Violence: A Reason To Grant Political Asylum from Mexico
and Central America, Yale Journal of International Law Vol. 38, http://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/o-38blake-gang-and-cartel-violence.pdf)
The resulting level of violence in Mexico and Central America has been extremely high.
According to U.S. military officials, the conflict in Mexico and Central America has come to rival
the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of the scale of violence, spending and weapons.26
The United Nations reports that the “Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala)
has the highest murder rate of any region in the world, and very high rates of other forms of
violent crime.”27 In Mexico, since Calderón’s campaign began in 2006, more than 50,000 people
have been killed as a result of drug-related violence.28 III. BASIS FOR PROTECTION FROM
GANGS AND CARTELS UNDER U.S. LAW The prevalence of gang violence in the region has been
accompanied in recent year by a steadily growing number of asylum applications in the United
States.29 These applicants are individuals who resist gang demands, including young men who
resist recruitment, women who are victims of sexual violence or intimidation, human rights and
church activists, those who resist extortion, law enforcement agents, gang members forced to
join gangs and trying to leave, and others. These individuals fleeing persecution from gangs
or drug-trafficking cartels in Mexico or Central America might claim refugee, non-refoulement, or
Convention Against Torture (CAT) protection in the United States. The international legal
definition of refugee is incorporated into United States law, with minor changes, in the Immigration
and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980.31 The definition contains three
core elements: (1) a well-founded fear of persecution; (2) a nexus between the persecution and
a Convention ground including race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social
group, or political opinion; and (3) a lack of state protection. Additionally, Article 33(1) of the
Refugee Convention codifies the principle of non-refoulement, which forbids a state from rendering a
victim of persecution to her persecutor.32 States party to the Refugee Convention or the 1967
Protocol are under no obligation to grant asylum to refugees, however. Under Article 33(1), they are
only prohibited from expelling or returning refugees to a country where they would face persecution
on enumerated grounds.
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AT: Non-Unique – Drug Violence Increasing Now
[___]
[___] Drug violence is decreasing now, but continued focus is key.
Guerrero, staff writer for the Americas Quarterly, 2014
(Eduardo Guerrero, Americas Quarterly, “Cuba and Colombia”, Fall 2014,
http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/yes-violence-and-murder-are-decreasing-mexico)
When Mexican President Felipe Calderón left office in 2012, the nation’s war on the drug cartels
had already claimed 60,000 lives. Now, two years into the presidency of his successor,
Enrique Peña Nieto, security conditions are still far from praiseworthy, but have improved in
several key areas. Homicides, the most reliable indicator for measuring public security in Mexico,
have steadily decreased over the past two years. According to Mexico’s Insituto Nacional de
Estadística y Geografía (National Institute of Statistics and Geography—INEGI) the number of
murders decreased 13 percent between 2012 and 2013, and the homicide rate per 100,000 people
declined from 22 to 19. Organized crime-related deaths have decreased even faster. According
to the database of Lantia Consultores, a Mexico City-based public policy consulting firm, there were
1,956 organized crime-related deaths in the second quarter of 2014, down from a peak of 4,587 in the
second quarter of 2011. The pace of the decline in organized crime-related deaths has been
especially encouraging in two key metropolitan areas. In Ciudad Juárez, once known as the
world’s most violent city, organized crime-related deaths have dropped from a peak of 787
during the third quarter of 2010 to 54 in the second quarter of 2014—a 93 percent drop. Likewise, in
the Monterrey metropolitan area, Mexico’s industrial capital, murders in this category dropped
from 472 in the first quarter of 2012 to 38 in the second quarter of 2014. The improvement in
Monterrey seems to be the result of a thorough revamping of state and local police departments,
which is largely the result of aggressive lobbying by the city’s powerful business community. This
demonstrates the potential of local institution-building efforts in Mexico. Even the U.S. Department of
State acknowledged as much in its August 2014 Mexico Travel Warning, which stated, “Security
services in and around Monterrey are robust and have proven responsive and effective in combating
violent crimes.”1 Moreover, over the past two years, peace has returned to cities throughout
northern Mexico to an extent that seemed impossible between 2008 and 2012. High-profile
attacks, shootings and roadblocks are less frequent. (One exception is Tamaulipas, which
experienced a violent crisis as recently as last April.) Unfortunately, data for crimes other than
homicide remain unreliable in Mexico. Thus, it is very hard to assess whether the downward trend in
murders extends to other violent crimes, especially kidnapping and extortion, which are foremost
concerns for Mexicans.
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AT: No Link – Surveillance Fails to Solve Crime
[___]
[___] Domestic surveillance is the key tool to solve organized crime—it enables law
enforcement to anticipate trafficking plans and obtain evidence for court without significantly
infringing on individual privacy.
Ohr, Professor of Law, 2007
(Bruce G, December, Professor of Law, Georgetown University, Effective Methods to Combat
Transnational Organized Crime in Criminal Justice Processes, 116TH INTERNATIONAL TRAINING
COURSE VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS, http://www.unafei.or.jp/english/pdf/PDF_rms/no58/5805.pdf
Electronic Surveillance represents the single most important law enforcement weapon against
organized crime. There is nothing as effective as proving a crime through the defendant’s own
words. Electronic Surveillance evidence provides reliable, objective evidence of crimes
through the statements of the participants themselves. Additionally, electronic surveillance
enables law enforcement to learn of conspirators’ plans to commit crimes before they are
carried out. This allows them to survey the criminal activities, such as delivery of contraband and
conspiratorial meetings, or to disrupt and abort the criminal activities where appropriate, making
electronic surveillance particularly helpful in preventing the occurrence of violent crimes. Additionally,
electronic surveillance is particularly helpful in transnational crimes because it enables law
enforcement to intercept conspirators in the United States discussing crimes with their
criminal associates in countries outside the United States. Electronic surveillance gives United
States law enforcement evidence of conspiratorial planning against co-conspirators operating outside
of the United States that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain. While electronic surveillance is
extremely valuable, it is also a very sensitive technique because of legitimate concerns for a person’s
privacy interests. These concerns impose significant restrictions on electronic surveillance. For
example, electronic surveillance can only be used to obtain evidence of some specific serious
offenses listed in the governing statute.4 If an agent or governing attorney wishes to secure electronic
surveillance, he or she must submit an affidavit to a United States district court judge containing
specific facts establishing probable cause to believe that the subjects of the electronic surveillance
are committing certain specified offenses and that it is likely that relevant evidence of such crimes will
be obtained by the electronic surveillance.5 Thus, the government must receive the approval of a
neutral independent judge to be authorized to conduct electronic surveillance. Additionally, before
electronic surveillance is permissible, the government must establish probable cause to believe that
other investigative techniques have been tried and failed to obtain the sought evidence, or establish
why other investigative techniques appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried, or establish why other
techniques would be too dangerous to try.
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AT: No Link – Drug Surveillance Fails to Curb Cartel Power
[___]
[___] Drugs surveillance by the DEA reduces the power of drug cartels—special operations
create a database of information that allow officials to coordinate and successfully capture
crime leaders .
Cooke, Reporter, 2013
(Kristina, DEA Special Operations Division (SOD) Covers Up Surveillance Used To Investigate
Americans: Report, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/dea-surveillancecover-up_n_3706207.html)
The SOD's role providing information to agents isn't itself a secret. It is briefly mentioned by the DEA
in budget documents, albeit without any reference to how that information is used or represented
when cases go to court. The DEA has long publicly touted the SOD's role in multi-jurisdictional
and international investigations, connecting agents in separate cities who may be unwittingly
investigating the same target and making sure undercover agents don't accidentally try to arrest each
other. SOD'S BIG SUCCESSES The unit also played a major role in a 2008 DEA sting in
Thailand against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; he was sentenced in 2011 to 25 years in prison
on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC. The SOD also
recently coordinated Project Synergy, a crackdown against manufacturers, wholesalers and
retailers of synthetic designer drugs that spanned 35 states and resulted in 227 arrests. Since its
inception, the SOD's mandate has expanded to include narco-terrorism, organized crime and gangs.
A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent LinkedIn posting on
the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million. Today, the SOD offers at
least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international
investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants,
foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive
database known as DICE. The DICE database contains about 1 billion records, the senior DEA
officials said. The majority of the records consist of phone log and Internet data gathered
legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. Records are kept
for about a year and then purged, the DEA officials said. About 10,000 federal, state and local law
enforcement agents have access to the DICE database, records show. They can query it to try to link
otherwise disparate clues. Recently, one of the DEA officials said, DICE linked a man who tried to
smuggle $100,000 over the U.S. southwest border to a major drug case on the East Coast. "We use
it to connect the dots," the official said. "AN AMAZING TOOL"
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AT: Link Turn – War on Drugs Causes Cartel Violence
[___]
[___]The WOD is key to deter Drug Cartels in Mexico. They are working with external
terrorists.
Rosenthal, 2013
(Terence, political consultant and contributor at the Center for Security Policy, July 10, “Los Zetas and
Hezbollah, a Deadly Alliance of Terror and Vice”,
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/07/10/los-zetas-and-hezbollah-a-deadly-alliance-of-terrorand-vice/)
Hezbollah has training bases and sleeper cells in Mexico and South America. They also assist
drug cartels with skills in bomb-making and explosives. Hezbollah has also created tunnels on the
American border that are extremely similar to those dividing Gaza and Egypt. These tunnels
are perfect for the transport of illegal conventional and biological weapons to contacts in the
United States. Weaponry created by Hezbollah is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people
in major U.S. cities. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger
Noriega believes that an attack on U.S. personnel installations by Hezbollah is possible. It is
known that they have expanded from their operations in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, and are
gaining ground in Central America and Mexico. The relationship between Hezbollah and Los
Zetas has almost touched down on American soil. Los Zetas was to be paid to bomb the Israeli
Embassy in Washington, and the Saudi and Israeli embassy in Argentina. Why is the combination
of well-connected drug dealers, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and the Zetas such a
dangerous combination? It is a money laundering operation that has the power to supersede
local government, weaken communities, and make people subject to criminal tyranny. It is
highly possible that this threat could become a reality in the United States.
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AT: Link Turn – Plan Reduces US Capacity
[___]
[___] The war on drugs may not be perfect, but it has been successful – it has decreased drug
demand and crime and its contribution to prison population and racial violence is declining.
Lane, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, 2014
(Charles, Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, has taught Journalism as Georgetown
University, Feb 19th, Drug legalization claims are cloudy, Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-drug-legalization-claims-arecloudy/2014/02/19/fd577128-98cf-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html)
But the data do make one thing clear: If the goal of the war on drugs is to limit demand for
drugs, then you can’t say the authorities are losing. According to federally sponsored surveys
that track drug usage, the rate of current-month powder and crack cocaine use dropped by half in
the past 10 years. Meth use fell by a third; heroin use has remained flat. True, marijuana use
rose slightly overall — but it fell among 12- to 17-year-olds, a result that even legalizers should
applaud since they generally don’t favor allowing minors to smoke. Meanwhile, even as drug
prohibition continued, violent crime and property crime fell, dramatically. Not only did the
number of murders in the United States decrease from 24,703 in 1991 to 14,612 in 2011 but drugrelated murders declined from 1,607 to 505, according to Justice Department statistics. Some 6.5
percent of murders were related to drugs in 1991, but only 3.4 percent were in 2011. The drug arrest
rate fell from 142.1 per 100,000 in 1991 to 97.8 per 100,000 in 2011. Yes, blacks were still 3.9
times more likely to be busted for drugs than whites in 2011 — but that ratio was down nearly
50 percent from the one recorded 20 years earlier. Marijuana arrests account for a bigger share of
drug arrests these days, 44.3 percent in 2011 vs. 22.4 percent in 1991. But when you compare
marijuana arrests to actual days of marijuana usage — busts per toke, so to speak — the story’s
different. By this measure, “enforcement intensity” fell 42 percent between 2007 and 2012,
according to drug-policy expert Keith Humphreys of Stanford University. Some “war.” It’s a myth that
prisons are full of low-level pot smokers. Less than 1 percent of the state and federal prison
population is doing time for pot possession alone; most of these prisoners are dealers who
pleaded guilty to possession in return for a lesser sentence, according to the 2012 study
“Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know,” published by Oxford University Press.
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AT: Alternative Causality – Poverty Causes Drug Cartel Violence
[___]
[___] Drug cartel violence is a war on the poor. It hurts their living conditions and creates
crises for them even in times of economic growth
UNCTAD, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2013
(Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Competition Law and Policy, The impact of cartels on the
poor, http://unctad.org/meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/ciclpd24rev1_en.pdf)
7. In addition to seller cartels, buyer cartels could also have a detrimental effect, especially on poor
farmers. Buyer cartels are observed in major commodity products, such as coffee, cotton, tea,
tobacco and milk on which a number of small farmers and many developing countries heavily
depend as a major source of revenue.1 In the cocoa market, nearly 90 per cent of the global cocoa
production in the late 1990s came from smallholder farmers.2 These commodity markets are
exposed to cartelization by buyers due to insufficient negotiating power of smallholder
farmers vis-à-vis the small number of buyers, normally large transnational corporations. Considering
that 70 per cent of the developing world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people live in rural areas,
buyer cartels or abuse of market power by large transnational agribusinesses in these
commodity sectors would have a direct impoverishing impact on the rural poor as well as the
producer countries. 8. Cartels could produce more detrimental effects on the poor at times of
economic recession or crisis. During economic crisis, the poor are hit hardest and SMEs are more
vulnerable to economic downturn and less likely to survive the economic crises. Low income
households tend to be the first ones to lose jobs. Higher prices caused by cartels add to the
drastic fall in income, thereby forcing the poor to hardship. As an example, the Mexico tortilla
crisis, initially caused by external factors, not only hit the poorest but also drew poor tortilla makers
out of the market. The situation deteriorated when large tortilla producers benefited from the crisis
and engaged in hoarding to push prices up even further.4 Even at times of economic boom,
cartels in fuel or basic food markets could trigger crisis for the poor. Amartya Sen argues that
famine might occur not only from lack of food but from inequalities built into food distribution
mechanisms. He has used the example of the Bengal famine of 1943, which, he argued, was caused
by an urban economic boom that increased food prices, thereby causing the death of millions of rural
workers from starvation when their wages did not keep up.
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AT: Impact Turn – Drug Cartels Help Economy
[___]
[___] Drug cartels do not help the Mexican economy—they plunged Mexico further into crisis
during the recession and scare off legitimate sources of economic growth.
Emmott, Senior Correspondent for Reuters, 2009
(Robin, April 3rd, Drug war hits Mexican economy in crisis,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/03/us-mexico-drugs-economy-analysisidUSTRE5325PG20090403)
"The issue of security has effected economic growth in Mexico," Finance Minister Agustin
Carstens said recently. "If we could resolve this issue it could give the economy an extra shine
of at least 1 percent," he said. Central bank Governor Guillermo Ortiz blamed the peso's fall to
a 16-year low against the dollar last month on investor alarm even as the Mexican and U.S.
governments and international economists insist Mexico is far from becoming a failed state.
"Evidently the insecurity has had an impact on investors' behavior," Ortiz told a recent banking
conference. Mexico's government says the economy will shrink 2.8 percent this year, tumbling
into recession on a sharp drop in U.S. demand for Mexican exports. Many economists say the
slump could be even more dramatic. The turf war between Mexican drug cartels has become
the biggest test facing President Felipe Calderon, a strong-willed conservative who took power in
late 2006. U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Mexico this month, and is sending high-tech gear
and hundreds more agents to the border to fight the smuggling of drugs, weapons and cash. In
Mexico's border states, where violence has been the most intense, business people say that on
top of a collapse in exports to the United States and falling domestic sales, some are forced to
pay protection money to gangs. "They demand that you pay into a bank account or they'll kill
you," said a bar owner in the northern city of Monterrey who gave his name only as Emmanuel.
"Aside from the fear, it's an economic blow, its like paying taxes twice." Others say some
foreign firms are putting off investments as they see Mexico as too unsafe.
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