To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: John Gibler
every year. The Mexican Treasury Secretary said in a press conference on June 15, 2010, that the forty-one banks operating in Mexico have “ten billion dollars that cannot be explained within the proper dynamics of the country’s economic activity.”
But banks also need drug lords. In 2008, drug money saved the major global banks from collapse and thus, stretching just a bit, saved capitalism from a devastating internal crisis when the speculative capital markets imploded. Drug money—truckloads of cash, actual physical money—would appear to be one of capitalism’s global savings accounts. In December 2009, Rajeev Syal at The Observer in London reported, “Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis.” Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told Syal that he had seen “evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were ‘the only liquid investment capital’ available to some banks on the brink of collapse [in 2008]. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.”
Christian De Brie wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2000 that over $350 billion of illicit cash is successfully laundered and reinvested globally every year , nearly $1 billion a day. Here is his math, “The annual profits from drug trafficking (cannabis, cocaine, heroin) are estimated at $300–500bn (not to mention the rapidly mushrooming synthetic drugs), that is 8% to 10% of world trade. Computer piracy has a turnover in excess of $200bn, counterfeit goods $100bn, European Community budget fraud $10-15bn, animal smuggling $20bn, etc. In all, and counting only activities with a transnational dimension, including the white slave trade, the world’s gross criminal product totals far above $1,000bn a year, nearly 20% of world trade.” He writes that if half of that goes to overhead, that leaves $500 billion in profit. If one-third of that amount goes to the laundry services of banks and investors, that would leave $350 billion in profit fully integrated into the “legal” capitalist economy every year.
Black market entrepreneurs also like to diversify their investment portfolios. Besides laundering their cash through myriad businesses in the legal economy, today’s transnational drug barons are expanding, for example, into oil. A report in the Washington Post in December 2009 details how the Zetas and other cartels stole more than $1 billion of oil from the Mexican national oil company Pemex between 2008 and the end of 2009. In the cases described in the Washington Post , the Zetas tapped directly into federal pipelines and siphoned the oil off to stolen tanker trucks, which they then used to sell the fuel to a range of Texas-based oil companies like Y Gas and Oil and Trammo Petroleum. Pemex officials said they detected $715 million of stolen oil in 2008 alone. And apparently the Zetas are not the only ones working the stolen oil market: company officials found 396 illegal taps throughout all of Mexico’s thirty-one states. In 2010, oil theft increased by another 75 percent. In December 2010, an oil pipeline in Puebla state exploded, killing twenty-eight people, including thirteen children. Pemex director Juan José Suárez Coppel blamed the blast on an illegal tap.
Those in the illicit drug business add to their profits with income from human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and even cattle rustling. Edmundo Ramírez Martínez authored a report for the Mexican legislature on the perils Central American migrants face while crossing Mexico en route to the United States. He estimated that the drug organizations’ control over human trafficking along the border brings them another $3 billion a year. Another report from the Mexican legislature states that kidnapping has increased 300 percent in the past five years. The report calculates that drug gangs participated in 30 percent of
But banks also need drug lords. In 2008, drug money saved the major global banks from collapse and thus, stretching just a bit, saved capitalism from a devastating internal crisis when the speculative capital markets imploded. Drug money—truckloads of cash, actual physical money—would appear to be one of capitalism’s global savings accounts. In December 2009, Rajeev Syal at The Observer in London reported, “Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis.” Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told Syal that he had seen “evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were ‘the only liquid investment capital’ available to some banks on the brink of collapse [in 2008]. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.”
Christian De Brie wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2000 that over $350 billion of illicit cash is successfully laundered and reinvested globally every year , nearly $1 billion a day. Here is his math, “The annual profits from drug trafficking (cannabis, cocaine, heroin) are estimated at $300–500bn (not to mention the rapidly mushrooming synthetic drugs), that is 8% to 10% of world trade. Computer piracy has a turnover in excess of $200bn, counterfeit goods $100bn, European Community budget fraud $10-15bn, animal smuggling $20bn, etc. In all, and counting only activities with a transnational dimension, including the white slave trade, the world’s gross criminal product totals far above $1,000bn a year, nearly 20% of world trade.” He writes that if half of that goes to overhead, that leaves $500 billion in profit. If one-third of that amount goes to the laundry services of banks and investors, that would leave $350 billion in profit fully integrated into the “legal” capitalist economy every year.
Black market entrepreneurs also like to diversify their investment portfolios. Besides laundering their cash through myriad businesses in the legal economy, today’s transnational drug barons are expanding, for example, into oil. A report in the Washington Post in December 2009 details how the Zetas and other cartels stole more than $1 billion of oil from the Mexican national oil company Pemex between 2008 and the end of 2009. In the cases described in the Washington Post , the Zetas tapped directly into federal pipelines and siphoned the oil off to stolen tanker trucks, which they then used to sell the fuel to a range of Texas-based oil companies like Y Gas and Oil and Trammo Petroleum. Pemex officials said they detected $715 million of stolen oil in 2008 alone. And apparently the Zetas are not the only ones working the stolen oil market: company officials found 396 illegal taps throughout all of Mexico’s thirty-one states. In 2010, oil theft increased by another 75 percent. In December 2010, an oil pipeline in Puebla state exploded, killing twenty-eight people, including thirteen children. Pemex director Juan José Suárez Coppel blamed the blast on an illegal tap.
Those in the illicit drug business add to their profits with income from human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and even cattle rustling. Edmundo Ramírez Martínez authored a report for the Mexican legislature on the perils Central American migrants face while crossing Mexico en route to the United States. He estimated that the drug organizations’ control over human trafficking along the border brings them another $3 billion a year. Another report from the Mexican legislature states that kidnapping has increased 300 percent in the past five years. The report calculates that drug gangs participated in 30 percent of