Archive for the ‘Latin America’ Category
The Ant Trade’s Consequences
Filed under: Latin America, United States | Tags: Arms, Economics, Mexico, Military, United States
Leave a Comment The ant trade is the name for the trickle of guns that flow south to Mexico as drugs come north. It’s called that, because traditionally, only a handful of guns cross the border in any single arms run. Done enough times, however, and the flow of arms can be quite large. Hence the image of ants crossing the border all with several weapons. It seems that trickle has increased greatly in the past few years:
No other state has produced more guns seized by police in the brutal Mexican drug wars than Texas. In the Lone Star State, no other city has more guns linked to Mexican crime scenes than Houston. And in the Texas oil town, no single independent dealer stands out more for selling guns traced from south of the border than Bill Carter.
Carter, 76, has operated four Carter’s Country stores in the Houston metropolitan area over the past half-century. In the past two years, more than 115 guns from his stores have been seized by the police and military in Mexico.
As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border, the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003.
A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years.
Eight of the top 12 dealers are in Texas, three are in Arizona, and one is in California. In Texas, two of the four Houston area Carter’s Country stores are on the list, along with four gun retailers in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone.
“One of the reasons that Houston is the number one source, you can go to a different gun store for a month and never hit the same gun store,” said J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the Houston field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “You can buy [a 9mm handgun] down along the border, but if you come to Houston, you can probably buy it cheaper because there’s more dealers, there’s more competition.”
Drug cartels have aggressively turned to the United States because Mexico severely restricts gun ownership. Following gunrunning paths that have been in place for 50 years, firearms cross the border and end up in the hands of criminals as well as ordinary citizens seeking protection.
“This is not a new phenomenon,” Webb said.
What is different now, authorities say, is the number of high-powered rifles heading south – AR-15s, AK-47s, armor-piercing .50-caliber weapons – and the savagery of the violence.
Federal authorities say more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years, helping fuel the violence that has contributed to 30,000 deaths. Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to Washington in May and urged Congress and President Obama to stop the flow of guns south.
U.S. law enforcement has ramped up its focus on gun trafficking along the southwestern border. Arrests of individual gunrunners have surged. But investigators rarely bring regulatory actions or criminal cases against U.S. gun dealers, in part because of laws backed by the gun lobby that make it difficult to prove cases.
First, a big problem here is there’s a politically powerful vested interest that profits from arming the drug cartels. The U.S., generally, is very good about controlling the flow of our military arms, but it seems the security state is turning a blind eye to this problem. Second, as crime has continued to decrease in the U.S. despite the recession, the increase in violence in Mexico may be the actual consequence of the lapsing of the assault weapons ban. I’ll also just note that border states have particularly lenient gun ownership laws, which no doubt helps fuel the ant trade. I wonder when this problem will create enough political pressure to change current gun policy.
Update:
Conservatives at Red State, of course, have a genuinely insane idea related to this: invade Mexico.
Cable News in the Developing World
Filed under: All Those Other Places, Latin America, Media | Tags: Cable News, Chile, Haiti, Media
Leave a Comment I found the coverage of the Chilean mining disaster disconcerting, but could not really put a finger on why. I found it vaguely wrong to swoop in and do a media blitzkrieg on the successful resolution of the collapse, when so many greater systemic tragedies occur all the time in Latin America, and elsewhere, in the developing world. I had no good way of explaining this notion any better. Maura R. O’Connor, however, articulates this line of thinking much better and uses the ongoing disaster in Haiti as an example:
CNN’s twenty-four-hour coverage of the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake, which took an estimated 300,000 lives, doubled the network’s viewership. This coverage undoubtedly played a role in the America public’s response to the tragedy—one out of two Americans donated money to aid organizations. But little reporting has been done since then that asks how exactly that money is being spent, holds aid organizations accountable to their promises, or investigates the American government’s development and economic policies in the country. These policies, argues sociologist Alex Dupuy, have kept Haiti frozen in a destructive cycle of aid-dependence and exploitation for decades, stripping Haiti of its self-determination. “For the level of tragedy, no one’s really being very honest,” said Michael Fairbanks, a development expert, of the American and international community’s rhetoric about Haiti since the earthquake. “[Haitians] are constantly put into the position of adolescence and being infantilized so they can prey on the charity from the rest of the hemisphere.”
The longer American news outlets ignore these critical and complex issues, the easier it will become to view their occasional jaunts to Haiti with cynicism: it’s an convenient place to get B-roll of tragedy and disaster. Their coverage increases viewership, but without a moral component of responsibility towards Haitians themselves over the long-term, such coverage is basically exploitative. And over time, superficial reporting on Haiti’s problems—which plays a role in soliciting charitable donations from Americans-will arguably make the media culpable in the very system of aid-dependence and misguided development policies that help keep Haiti poor.
Bananas Blogging: The Banana Mistake
Bananas need new packaging:
The main problem I have with the banana is its packaging. Whoever came up with it must have been running out of time and went with his or her first idea, which sometimes works out well, but sometimes you need to step away from the drawing board. So, in the place inside your head where you picture things, imagine someone starting to eat a banana. The person breaks open the peel, which always smooshes the top of the banana a little bit. That’s O.K. Whatever. But watch how the peel starts to drape over the hand. Now the banana is halfway eaten. The peel is now draping over the entire hand. Finally, the person finishes the banana and is left holding this disgusting peel, which is quickly turning brown and smelly! It’s not like an apple core, which you could throw out a car window and think, even though you’d be kidding yourself, Maybe an apple orchard will start here. Or an orange peel, which you wouldn’t throw out a car window, but at least it smells nice.
The Soy Cartel
Filed under: Economics and Business, Latin America | Tags: Argentina, Brazil, Soybeans
Leave a Comment Could we be looking at a soy and grain OPEC in South America?
Argentina and Brazil are negotiating an alliance with other South American producers of grains and oilseeds to deal jointly with buyers in Asia and elsewhere, according to Brazilian Agriculture Minister Wagner Rossi.
Rossi met his Argentine counterpart Julian Dominguez and ministers from Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in Santiago today and yesterday. Brazil is seeking to draw up “consistent” policies with its neighbors, Rossi said in an interview in Santiago.
A deal between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay would combine about half of the world’s soybean production, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Argentina and Brazil are also among the world’s top three corn exporters, according to the USDA. China is the world’s largest soybean importer.
