US Drug Agents Launder Profits of Mexican Cartels

By Ginger Thompson

Washington - Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington's expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency's effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.


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Legalizing Marijuana Would Hinder the Multi-Billion Dollar Empire of Mexican Drug Cartels

By Jonathan Benson
The prohibition of marijuana in the US has led to an "underground" cannabis industry in Mexico run primarily by violent gangster cartels like the ones wreaking havoc at the southern borders of Texas, Arizona, and California.

These cartels reap anywhere from $1 to $20 billion a year illegally selling marijuana to Americans, but advocates of reform and legalization say the crime and terror associated with the illicit drug trade would largely end if marijuana was simply decriminalized.

Just a few weeks ago, Mexican soldiers burned a 300-acre field of marijuana some 200 miles south of San Diego, Calif., near Tijuana, Mex. Operated by drug cartels, the field contained a potential yield of around 120 tons of marijuana, which is worth about $160 million, according to reports. And back in October, soldiers performed another burning on 134 metric tons of vacuum-packed marijuana discovered in the same region.

The constant pursuit of cartels that grow and sell marijuana, as well as raids and burnings of marijuana fields, have led to massive cartel backlash. After the Tijuana raid and burning in October, for instance, cartels murdered 13 recovering drug addicts at a rehabilitation center.

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The Ploy to Promote Genetically Engineered Seeds and Pesticides to Poor Mexican Farmers Is Impoverishing Their Communities

By Jill Richardson
Alternet, August 06, 2010
Straight to the Source

The Obama administration's Feed the Future initiative promises a second Green Revolution that will feed a planet of nine billion people by doubling crop yields by 2050. But considering that we produce enough food to feed the planet today and a billion people still go hungry, are yields really the problem? And if they are, are providing Green Revolution technologies like hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, chemical fertilizer and pesticides to subsistence farmers the best way to achieve them? I visited subsistence farmers in Mexico to find out.

The homes of campesinos, peasant farmers, in the rural areas surrounding Cuquio, Mexico (about an hour from Guadalajara) no longer have dirt floors. The Mexican government initiated a program to replace them with cement floors in 2008 and now most homes sport a plaque celebrating their new piso firmes. Electricity came about 20 years ago. For many, running water and bathroom facilities are modern conveniences they do not yet have. The government has recently distributed composting toilets to many, but not all, families.

One of the tiny adobe homes is decorated by flowers growing in upside-down Coca-Cola bottles turned into flower pots. Another is located next to a fencepost sporting an empty bag of Monsanto corn seeds -- seeds presumably planted in the adjoining cornfield, or milpa. This little corner of the world and the people who live here seem to be forgotten by everyone except for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and multinational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and DuPont. 

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