Tuesday 5 March 2013

Mexican Drug War

Hey People...... :)



                       This week we have been presenting our projects on areas of conflict in the world in our religion class. My partner Emma and I chose to do the Mexican Drug War. This was particularly interesting as we hadn't heard or seen very much on this conflict and so there was lot's information that we could find out about and learn from.
Our first portion of information came in the form of an ask.com entry where we discovered that at first Mexico was just the shipper of drugs and that Columbia was supplying the drugs to Mexico to send over the border to North America. Then we saw that Mexico decided to start growing their own drugs and shipping them to America themselves because they could earn more money this way.
This happened the late 1980's early '90's during this time Mexico had a closed corrupt government who had no problem with the drug cartels however in 2000 Vincente Fox became president of Mexico and decided it was time for reform. Fox sent Mexican troops to an area in Mexico (that I can't spell) to fight these cartels. But as it turned out the cartels were not willing to give up their power or wealth all that easily and decided to fight not only with the government but with each other for territory. These small drug cartels slowly grew into all out gang's.
Since the war started in 2005 there has been over 50,000 deaths and growing everyday (not including those who died from drug use) but this has been mostly civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at teh wrong time. But the gangs have also branched out into other criminal activities other than drugs such as gun smuggling, human trafficking and many other aspects of criminal minds.These criminal gangs target those who live in poverty and organise them to join there gangs.
There has been no international assistance to Mexico whatsoever which is really such a shame. I also believe that we should show more of an interest in national news about this war as it ruins lives with and the Mexican government is struggling with the burden of war.

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