Searching for truth in war on drugs
SECRETS OF MEXICO’S DRUG WAR BBC2, 11.50pm
MEXICO’S forces of law and order have had a noticeable degree of success in arresting drug lords recently.
Joaquín ‘el Chapo’ Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, a multi-billion dollar international corporation with franchises in 58 countries, was arrested in February 2014. In recent days, Omar Trevino Morales, head of the Zetas cartel, and Servando Gomez Martínez, leader of the Knights Templar cartel, have both been detained.
Such high-profile arrests usually give rise to hopes that the war on drugs is gradually being won. But as more than one authoritative news report makes clear, violence fuelled by drug-trafficking and corruption still afflicts Mexico, and shipments of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine continue to flood across the US border.
This revealing documentary suggests that the truth behind Guzman’s capture could be just another dark chapter in what it describes as the “scandal-ridden history of the US involvement in Latin America and the Mexican drug wars.”
The cartel is still enjoying extraordinary success and the programme probes allegations that the group has been given an easy ride in return for informing on other cartels.
In Chicago, cheap Mexican heroin has made its way from the inner city to the middle-class suburbs. In one small suburb last year, heroin overdoses claimed more lives than homicide and traffic accidents combined.
Such was the public anger over Chicago’s heroin epidemic that Guzman was declared Public Enemy Number One by the city’s crime commissioner in 2013 – the first person to be so identified since Al Capone.
The documentary also looks in detail at the impact of drug cartels’ ferocious violence in Mexico, including one incident when 14 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead by gunmen at a party. The gunmen had mistaken the party-goers for a rival gang. Families have since obtained a government document that suggests at least three of the guns used were part of a US gun-trafficking operation.