Sixty Years of Killing Drug Lords and the Drugs Keep Coming
Sixty Years of Killing Drug Lords and the Drugs Keep Coming
On Sunday the Mexican military killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The cartel moves drugs across nearly every continent and its reach runs through some twenty Mexican states, and on the day its leader died the group set fires to banks and shops and blocked roads and highways across the country to show that it could.
El Mencho rose to power after the Milenio Cartel fell apart. The Milenio Cartel fell apart because its leaders were captured and killed. Before El Mencho there was El Chapo, who was captured and sent to a US prison, and the Sinaloa Cartel did not go away but splintered into factions that are now at war across northern Mexico. Before El Chapo there were Los Zetas. Before Los Zetas there were the Colombian cartels. Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993 and a decade later Colombia's cocaine production was higher than it had ever been.
Each time a leader falls the group that replaces him is younger and more violent and less attached to the people who live in the territory he controls. Carlos Pérez Ricart, a researcher at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico, has said that what was once unthinkable becomes the new norm with every new generation.
This is the record of sixty years. And 80,000 Americans still died from drug overdoses last year.
At some point the question has to move from who is selling to why so many are still buying.