On The Horizon

MEXICO'S INCREASINGLY VIOLENT DRUG TRADE HAS RAMIFICATIONS FOR THE U.S.

The Colombian drug trade, with its unholy cast of right-wing
paramilitaries, corrupt army and government officials and Marxist
rebels, has reduced the country to anarchy.

Not even an infusion of $2 billion in U.S. military aid has stemmed
the flow of drugs or quelled the country's three-sided civil war. The
one advantage for the U.S. is that Colombia is far away.

Mexico is not, however. In the past decade Mexico has become the final
staging area for South American cocaine entering the U.S.

More recently, Mexico's long cultural tradition of growing marijuana
for personal use has become a huge export industry business.

Mexican growers and dealers are responding to basic economic
principles driven by America's appetite for illegal substances.

The crisis for Mexico and its new president Vicente Fox is that
Mexico's entrenched corruption and violence is getting worse. Far worse.

Dealers are now going after the government itself. Police, lawyers,
and even judges who can't be bought are being murdered by brazen
dealers who resent interference in their business.

Last month, drug dealers shot and killed two federal judges and one of
their wives in the tourist town of Mazatlan.

Days later, Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, a lawyer who represents
informers in the drug trade, survived her fourth assassination attempt.

To date, eight doctors, who knowingly or not performed cosmetic
surgery on drug dealers trying to hide their identity, have been murdered.

Hundreds of police have been killed.

Genaro Gongora, chief justice of Mexico's Supreme Court, said
criminals are trying "to take Mexican society hostage."

In some areas they plainly have. Mexico sadly appears to be going the
way of Colombia.

If the kidnappers and murderers are left to run amok, anarchy and
chaos, with all their dismal implications for Mexican and U.S.
society, can't be too far over the horizon.