the neo-liberal policies brought in during the 1980s basically drove millions of Mexicans into poverty, and so provided

a cheap labour force for the drugs cartels. The process meant a new subordination of the Mexican economy to the US economy. This meant that in the first six years of NAFTA some two million small farmers in Mexico left the land. This migration from the land to the cities, to the maquiladoras on the border, and to the US itself has helped produce a flexible labour pool for criminal organizations to employ, a massively cheap labour force. the number of human rights abuses committed by the military during their attempts to control the drugs cartels illegal detentions, torture, deaths, have shown a six-fold increase. The aim is to protect a very unequal and unfair system. It is to preserve the hegemony of the Mexican business and political elites, as well as US and international business interests, and to stop the poor 'interfering' in this. There's no doubt that under the PAN, the 'war on drugs' has been a failure. There's an argument that says that the PRI provided a modicum of stability throughout Mexico, and that they can deal with the cartels, the so-called 'pax mafiosa'. The criminal organizations have become much more powerful. In some areas they are even challenging the state, taking on the police and the army- and often with the state's own weapons. I think that the situation has grown so much worse the PRI will not be able to control it. Mexico's dominance in the drug trade has developed over the past 20 years. Mexico's dominance in the drug trade has developed over the past 20 years. "The [Mexicans] began as couriers, and then they took over the business from the Colombians," he says. "And then [they] owned the lion's share of the cocaine "The [PRI] had a very good system of controlling all aspects of national life all the local police forces and organized crime [were controlled] through a very well-constructed system of power, where the power flows down like water and the money rises up like gas," When Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, he vowed to wage war on the drug cartels. In the past four years, more than 3,000 policemen and soldiers have been killed by the cartels. "Many members of the public, when asked in surveys [if] they should make pacts between the cartels, they say yes," In Mexico, it is often impossible to know who is behind somethinga massacre, a candidacy, an assassination, the capture of a crime boss, a discovery of high-level corruption. Pea Nietos security platform is nothing special, either. He might eventually return the Army to its barracks and, like virtually every recent President, revamp the federal police. Consulta Mitofsky and Mexicans United Against Crime, reported that in the five years since the drug war began (2006-2011) crimes have increased 15%, with homicides up 88%, kidnappings 81%, and extortion 46%. According to the US drug report, between 2004-2008, heroin production increased 340% in Mexico. Yet, far from being safe, its citizens live in fear. In addition to assassinations, hundreds of people have been disappeared and tens of thousands have fled their homes. According to government statistics, only 20% of crimes are investigated, only 9% go to trial and only 1% result in punishment. Besides the booming economy of war, the drug war strategy serves

interests of social control. When the nation is militarized in the name of the drug war, the government can and does intimidate and often do worse to dissidents. Mexico felt the U.S. recession hard and has been slow to recover, and now could be facing the consequences of another global recession. The number of poor people has increased by five million during this administration. Various studies have shown that the bulk of the cartel weapons flow through Texas. Luis Astorga, a historian of the drug trade, has written that in the rare instances when the police and military intervened, it was to prevent traffickers from becoming completely autonomous or getting so wild as to go beyond certain limits of socially and historically tolerated violence. Mexicos cartels were evolving from national drug trafficking organizations to transnational organized crime syndicates. Ral Salinas, the brother of 1988 PRI presidential candidate Carlos Salinas, met with the cartels boss, Juan Garca Abrego, in 1987 to pledge the partys protection if his brother won the election, according to documents later released by Mexicos Attorney Generals Office. Garca was arrested and extradited to the United States in 1996, setting off a brutal succession battle. Now organized crime was establishing boundaries for the authorities, not the other way around. That more than one criminal group was setting the rules and demanding allegiance only complicated matters. Staying neutral was unacceptable, but choosing the wrong side could be deadly. Federal efforts to arrest narco-politicians here in the past have been an embarrassing failure. To many Mexicans, the rising count of gruesome drug-related murders is evidence that the governments strategy has failed. recent years, Mexican attitudes about American involvement in matters of national security have softened. recent years, Mexican attitudes about American involvement in matters of national security have softened.