Authority

My mothersent me a message recently in where she told me that people she knew were asking her about her son’s past. Because as I’ve chosen to write in my first novel about the Italian Mafia and Mexican drug cartel, people are curious to know what authenticates me as someone who can write on these topics. I presume the questions they want to ask—but are too polite to do so—whether or not I was a part of these organizations. My moter, being the sweetheart that she is, has never really asked to many questions about my past. When I told her in 2001 that I was moving to Mexico she was sad but supportive, and has continued to be so throughout the last ten years.

I was never a member of these organizations. However, in 1999 I worked as a financial advisor for a Wall Street firm. In such capacity I managed investment portfolios for any number of individuals and nonprofit organizations. Every broker/advisor has to choose a niche for his clients base, and I took a less orthodox path than most. As a financial advisor I followed the money in a different way than my colleagues. Like them I had corporate executive and entreprenuerial-clients, but one of my best friend’s father was a real live wiseguy from the Italaina Mafia. I had been introduced to the man before, and being as the man had alot of legitimate businesses and associates he was able to do wonders for my career. But this association did more than just provide me with referrals and increase my assets under management, it opened my eyes to the hypoerisy of “legitimate business.”

Two years later I decided to rtake my career to the urban metropolis of Mexico City. As a financial advisor with Wall Street experience I believed I would be successful in a societal climate where I wouldn’t be seen as a racial minority. Never had I imagined how difficult it would be to make professional acquantances amongst a population of twenty-plus million people. Competition in Mexico’s financial sector was fierce, and brokers bankers and advisors, much as myself, treated their clients like family. These were not bonds easily broken, being from Wall Street or Mars didn’t impress anyone. I was on the brink of failure when it occured to me that I needed to go back to the basics—follow the money. Instead of the multigenerational wealthy families that every other advisor was after I followed the illicit money. Andsurprisingly the contacts weren’t that difficult to make.

The country was teaming with multi-millionares who had made their money from illicit means. People who had legitimate businesses and alot of money to invest. As I had done in New York, I had found my niche.

These relationships, through professional in nature, opened my eyes to the realities not taught in textbooks. I began to ask myself all sorts of questions—one of which, what is a criminal?—and the answers I arrived at surprised me. If a criminal is someone who commits crime, and crime is something deemed illegal, and illegal is something determined by whoever has the power—given or taken—from the people, then I wasn’t so sure that the right people were going to prison. If Wall Street had taught me anything it was that wealth was a synonym for righteousness. Everyday I either saw, heard, or sensed something unethical or illegal—by any civilized standards—taking place around me. Presidents of publicly traded companies would whisper tips to their golf buddies—insider trading—who would then contact their brokers to capitalize on the tip. As brokers we said nothing; ultimately, were we not there to make money? Having changed my country code hadn’t altered this reality one bit.

Ban on Drugs

I had a discussion recently with the aide to a well known politician in Mexico City. The conversation was over drinks, and since I’m far from being a reporter, I’ll leave names out of it. Besides, what’s important is the content.

The political aide asked. “Tell me Mario, in what you write, fiction wise, you treat these cartels like bands of heroes, why is that?”

“I don’t think they’re heroes,” I said. “I just think that they aren’t the enemy that we should be fighting.”

This, of course was like lighting a fuse to a stick of dynamite. This political aide—who we’ll call Ruben lost his older brother to this incessant was against organized; his brother was a federal police officer. Maybe part of me wanted to light the fuse. Because I’m just as frustrated as anyone else by the seemingly unending violence throughout Mexico...and the world at large.

We both sipped our drinks in silence. A silence broken by me when I told him that I wasn’t trying to reopen a fresh wound. “I know your loss is recent. The last thing you wanna hear is that your big brother died in vain—”

“He didn’t,” Ruben said firmly.

“I know,” I said. My friend here is an avid weight lifter with about thirty-five kilos on me, easy. “You opened the door to this conversation, so hear me out.

“The government has essentially decided to wage war at the symptoms rather than the disease. You kill one drig trafficker and before his corpse is cold another has stepped into his place. On the off chance that the police arrest him, then parade him before the cameras, and even maybe get information from him, what has really been gained? More traffickers maybe arrested, turned, or killed, but so what? The cocaine still comes in, and the majority of it still makes it to the U.S. market. If not with one trafficker, then with another.”

Ruben signaled to the bartender for two more rounds. “We’re making the prison sentences harder, and the officers are a lot less hesitant to fire first and ask questions later.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You could bring back the firing squad and public hangings and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. A man who is desperate is not thinking about the consequences of what may or may not happen to him tomorrow or the next day. He’s living in the moment. Yesterday he might have been an upstanding citizen, but he was hungry, his clothing was secondhand, and his prospects for meeting a beautiful woman, or for helping his elderly mother with money were zero. Yesterday he was a victim. But today...”

“Today he’s a criminal,” Ruben finished emphatically for me.

“Why because he decided to do what everyone else has been doing for as long as history has recorded? Look around...this isn’t a society, this is a free for all. As a whole we’re pitted against one another by the power of the almighty dollar. We’re asked to play by the rules set in place by those in power, with money, those who aren’t hungry. No man worth his salt is going to play by those rules.”

“It’s called civilization—progress.”

“What civilization, what progress?” I asked, feeling my pores open up. “The fact that we have more technology andlive longer aren’t in themselves progress. We still control people, if not by the blade of a sword, than by the barrel of a gun; we still kill, torture, and abuse our fellow citizen.

“Most nations tout equally but in all actuality, what we have here is a modern form of slavery.” I stopped and thought for a moment. “I take that back, we have progressed. The Egyptians had to use whips and chains to build their temples and mine their gold.

In all our ‘progress’ we’ve figured out how to program man into being a slave while convinced that he’s free. The fact that someone pays them for their efforts doesn’t make them free, especially not when starvation and death are the only other options.”

“You’re taking this a little far—slavery?”

“Ever been to India?” I asked. He shook his head negatively.

“Well, a huge population;—mostly poor, uneducated, and without opportunity to progress living in a country rapidly expanding under a tech boom that had made way to a middle class. Which, of course, is touted as good news, without anyone stopping to question it. Yes, there is more money, more private property and more infrastructure development—more capitalism.”

“Exactly more jobs.”

“Yeah, the construction industry is one of India’s largest employers. The labor force is made up of migrants from the devastated agriculture sector, escaping poverty, disease, and death they find themselves forced into a labor economy that exploits them with unsfe working environments, horrible living conditions, and almost complete social exclusion. I’ve seen them, and I tell you—they’re slaves. Even children work on these construction sites. These people are seen as nothing more than an expendable resource, like trees to be cut down, or water or air to be polluted.”

Rueben took a deep sigh. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t overly concerned with India’s poor when Mexico has more than it’s fair share. “This has what to do with narco trafficking?”

“Everything” I said, “because the wealthy in India are no different from the wealthy anywhere else in the world. If Mexico had the kind economic growth that I ndia or China has, the poor here would be exploited just the same. The poor understand this which is why your attempts at stopping them from trafficking the one product they have that Americans want is futile at best.”

“You’ve obviously never seen what cocaine, heroin, and all these other poisons do to people—to kids. You expect the governments of the world to just sit back let their populations destroy themselves from the indside out?”

“If that’s what a population wants to do, then they will do it with or without the approval of some bureaucrat who’s never tasted the bitternss of poverty. Nobody wants to live with someone else’s rules over their head. Nobody wants to live under the perpetual threat of ‘do this—or else.’ Besides, if someone is determined to destroy themselves so instead alleviate the pains of their reality, they will ultimately find a way to do so, whether it be through alcohol, prescription meds, or some other chemical equivalent waiting to be discovered. these rules, these laws, these futile attempts at controlling people doesn’t work. They don’t address wht people find themselves so dissatisfied with life that they find chemical stimulation to be the only answer available to them. Until you address that problem, all that’s going to be achieved with this war on drugs is more senseless killing.”

“Well, what is the problem?” Rueben asked, somewhat sarcastically.

“Everything,” I said. “Starting from our values and going up from there. We value money which translates into power...and power gives us freedom to do and live how we want. Just because someone is poor doesn’t mean that they stop dreaming color, of freedom. The poor want freedom from the government sanctioned slavery just the same as the rich want to keep theirs.”

“So what you’re saying is that because I was born into a priveleged life that provided me with opportunity, that I’m somehow against the poor and less fortunate, that I want to keep them where they are?”

“I don’t presume to kmow what you want,” I said. “I know that somewhere along the line your family seized opportunities to make profit, to secure itself from the ills of humanity.”

“Not with selling drugs!”

“Relax,” I laughed, trying to difuse the tension. “Nobody is saying that your family sells drugs. All I’m saying is that they seized an opportunity, probably several, and, some of them had risks associated with them. But the reward of securing their family’s future was worth the risk in the short term. That’s no different from what so many young Mexicans are doing...they’re sezing an opportunity.

“Yes,” I said, anticipating what he was about to say. “Their opportunity happens to be an addictive drug that destroys lives. We could also argue that guns are made for the single end of killing, cigarettes cause cancer, alcohol destroys more lives than drug use, and drilling for oil destroys our environment—but all these are perfectly legal. tell me that it isn’t hypocrisy for the U.S government to ban the cocaine and heroin, the two end products that happen to flood billions into Latin American economics, if they themselves could produce it they would undoubtebly be its biggest advocates. What American policy makers fear isn’t the well-being of its citizens, but fear of what economically powerful neighbors to the South might mean in generations to come. South Americans have two extremely resillient crops—coca and poppy—both extremely valuable on the world markets and they’re not supposed to sell them because it’s harmful. Can someone show me a product that isn’t harmful?”

“You don’t understand, Mario.”

“No, I don’t...”

Mario Gomez: War on Drugs

Mario Gomez: War on Drugs: "Why do the governments (U.S and Mexico) believe that this war can be won with violence? Is it even a war? I ask these questions because if i..."

Drug Legalization

I've received some firm responses to my hints towards drug legalization. First, relax, because this sin't going to happen anytime soon. I will say, however, that drug legalization would do away with the drug cartels.
The simply economic fact is that the cartels exist because of the market demand for the drugs these cartels offer. Just recently I heard a Columbian official touting about how they have reduced the exportation of cocaine by 15%. people applauded his announcement as good news. But good news to who? Because, economically speaking, this means a high demand along side a reduced supply; the only winners here are the producers, the transporters, and the distributors. All three will just change more for their product, and the buyers will pay it. And when they can't pay it some will turn to crime, thereby becoming a bigger problem for society. All of which helps to make my point that a war against the cartels is futile, because the strong demand for their products means that more will always exist. Kill or arrest ten today and tomorrow twelve more will fill the void.
Has history taught us nothing?
Prohibition (1920-33) was when the U.S. prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. My own great-grandfathet, Selso Gomez, served prison time in New Mexico for transporting liquor from Mexico to the U.S. And it didn't work. People want what they want—period.
What's important to observe here is that the bands of criminals—the cartels of the day—were done away with once prohibition was done away with.

Narcocorridos

A few days ago I listened while Mario Lopez, the governor of Sinaloa, spoke out about the dangers of the narco corrider to young people. he went on about how their minds—those of mexico’s youth—are like sponges. His argument isn’t a new one: the music encourages impressionable minds to seek hapineess in money and power. In fact, just today I heard part of a song saying something to the effect that boldness leads to power, power to money, and money to hapiness. The singer closed his argument by saying, “that’s the way of the world.” (In Spanish, of course) I understand and perhaps even sympathize with his plight of being a governor of a state infested with crime. His back is to the wall, people look to him for answers, and unfortunately—like most elected officials—he needs to point the blame at someone or something. Music being a faceless victim—so long as he keeps his statements general—he attacks verbal expression as the inciting factor. And his argument isn’t new.

About twenty years ago American politicians were spouting the same rhetoric from the pulpits of their communities. Rap music, was at that time, the culprit for rising crime, recidivis, teen pregnancy, and I think—if I’m not mistaken—drug and alcohol abuse. At that time I probably nodded my head in agreement; afterall, I was an aspiring capitalist, square. But now, to hear such an argument, I outright laugh.

The offensive music that Mr. Mario Lopez refers to as the cause of the problem is actually one of many results of the problem. For years I’ve researched organized crime in North America, and there is one truth that can’t be denied: Crime isn’t the problem, it’s the result. An organized band of criminals, regardless of their colors does not come to be of it’s own accord, no more than cancer. There is a cause, possibly unique in each case, for why a criminal organization has come into existence. And without going into the background of every criminal organization I’ve studied, I’ll just say that we—you, me, everyone—are the reasons organized crime exists. Because with one face we tell ourselves that we’re “free,” and with another we condemn the very freedoms that supposedly define us. 

We can’t have it both ways.

War on Drugs

Why do the governments (U.S and Mexico) believe that this war can be won with violence? Is it even a war?

Iask these questions because if it is a war, then I think the government’s are arresting or killing the wrong people. The mexican cartels don’t produce or manufacture cocaine or heroin, they transport these narcotics to a market that demands it. Regardless of how many (narcos) they arrest or outright kill there will always be another to take his or her place. If instead the sources could be destroyed, that still wouldn’t solve the problem of demand. Central and South America are not the only sources in the world; it’s fair to say that so long as there remains a demand, then there will remain a producer, a transporter, a distributor, and a merchant on the street.

If politicians were serious about curking the violence they would legalize what people will do to themselves anyway. The question we need to be asking ourselves is why they haven’t already done so. Already people are permitted to destroy themselves with tabacco, food alcohol, gambling, or any other vice they can come up with. laws don’t prevent people from doing anything. They never have and they never will; it just makes them more cautious—more rebelious.

What I see is that a “War on Grugs” is politicaly correct. It will never be effective because in truth, the governments don’t intend to stop the drugs. War is good business. It promotes fear and public reliance on Big Brother.