PANEL TALKS DRUG CARTELS

Panelists discussing drug violence along the U.S.-Mexico border said
that the corruption of government officials on both sides of the
border is a major problem facing the fight against cartels, during a
forum at the Institute of Politics yesterday.

"[Cartels] corrupt to create permissive environments in which they can
operate and get away with anything from murder to mass murder," said
Michael Braun, the former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency. "They corrupt, they intimidate and they resort to
extreme violence when the other two don't work."

However, Braun did not attribute the corruption only to officials on
the Mexican side of the border as he said that over eighty border
patrol officers have been arrested in the U.S. on corruption charges.

Braun said that cartels control networks that are significantly larger
than mafia operations in the U.S. because Mexican cartels function
through global networks and do not limit their activities to only one
region.

Braun called the current violence in Mexico a "turf war" between rival
cartels. To put the violence in perspective, Angela Kocherga, a
journalist based in Mexico, noted that more people were killed in
Juarez, Mexico than were killed in Afghanistan last year. Kocherga
described Juarez as "ground zero" in the drug war that is currently
raging.

Kocherga explained that control of the drug trade in specific areas
fuels violence between cartels as they vie for dominance of the
lucrative transportation corridors into the US.

Although Alejandro Poire Romero, the technical secretary of the
National Security Council of Mexico, said that the vast majority of
the violence is inflicted against those involved with the cartels,
rather than bystanders, Kocherga said that those only very
tangentially involved are still affected.

"You also see entire families being wiped out because someone on the
periphery might be involved," she said.

To combat the violence, Piore said that the current administration in
Mexico is taking an aggressive approach to coordinating federal and
local efforts. He also said that to fix the "rupturing of social
fabric" in Mexico, the government is beginning a series of broad
social programs to address issues such as poverty, health care, and
education, so that Mexicans feel that there are options available to
them besides being involved with the cartels.

Luciana E. Milano '14, a member of the IOP Forum Committee, said that
she thought the event was an important one to bring to campus in order
to make people aware of the oft-forgotten situation close to our border.

"At Harvard, you hear people talk about Libya and Japan, but to me
what's happening in Mexico is just as pressing a concern," she said.

Students disagreed about whether the strategies put forth by the
panelists would be successful. While some said that the approach of
integrating local and federal reform would be effective, Milano said
that she was concerned that the discourse put forth will not match up
with the reality of the situation.

"Both sides recognize the problem and they address in a theoretical
way, but they don't necessarily see the pragmatic side," Milano said.