http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/billmcclellan/story/643247EDB3F578C28625744C001AB995?OpenDocumentCorporations or cartels? A choice of ink over blood
By Bill McClellan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/18/2008
One week after Edgar Millan Gomez was killed in Mexico City, Anheuser-Busch announced it was giving up the right to import Grolsch, a Dutch beer. "The time is right to end our importation," said David A. Peacock, vice president of marketing for Anheuser-Busch. Analysts said the announcement was no surprise. In February, London-based SABMiller, the parent of Miller Brewing, bought the Dutch brewery that makes Grolsch. So it made no sense for Anheuser-Busch to use its considerable muscle to import a beer that is now owned by its chief rival.
Perhaps you're wondering what that has to do with the death of Millan Gomez. He was Mexico's federal police chief, and he was gunned down outside of his home by assassins who are assumed to have been working for a drug cartel. The cartels have been targeting government officials because the government has been trying to crack down on the cartels. The government is making this effort because the violence between the cartels has gotten out of hand. Authorities estimate more than 2,500 people have been killed in the last year as the cartels have battled over the control of the cocaine traffic from South America to the U.S. In other words, importation and exportation rights.
There was a time when we had cartels fighting over the booze trade. Perhaps the most famous booze cartel leader was Al Capone. In 1929, some members of his cartel killed seven members of a cartel headed by Bugs Moran. That incident became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The dispute that led to the massacre had to do with importation rights from Detroit. The Capone cartel had the rights to whiskey from Detroit, but the Moran cartel had been hijacking some shipments. Largely because of incidents like that, the feds made a real effort to stamp out the booze cartels. But they couldn't. There was too much demand. People liked to drink. Call it a weakness, if you want, but as long as people wanted to buy booze, somebody was going to provide it. For a long time, it was guys like Capone and Moran. Eventually, law-abiding people got tired of the killing and the bribery. Prohibition was ended. In essence, we traded Al Capone for August Busch. So now, when there is a conflict about importation rights, we have an announcement from a vice president of marketing.
...
Because these drugs are flowing through Mexico, that country runs the risk of becoming a narco-state. The illicit drug trade creates such immense profits that public officials can be bought or assassinated. Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Millan Gomez was the 10th federal police official to be murdered in the past two months. The week before he was killed, Roberto Velasco Bravo was killed. He was the head of the organized crime division in the public security ministry. Local police officials are being targeted, too. Earlier this year, the commander of public safety for Juarez was murdered, and before him, the police chief of Tecate was murdered. On and on it goes. It is always clear who gets the lead. It is not so clear who gets the silver.
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Our idiotic Prohibition-era approach to the drug issue gives the Mexican cartels
$40 billion annually in tax-free income. Think you could buy a few weapons on the international arms black market for that? That is more than the entire defense budgets of the majority of countries on this planet.
Here's something that the gun-ban-lobbyists in the OP didn't tell you---Mexican drug cartels are using real NFA Title 2/Class III restricted AK-47's and RPG's, and those are NOT SOLD in the United States. I would not be surprised if most of the handguns in northern Mexico come from the U.S., but the machineguns and RPG's used in the recent border shootouts most certainly are not.
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