photographing narco violence

TEUN VOETEN
For the last 22 years, I have been covering wars and conflicts worldwide. I have seen the whole gamut of barbaric acts that humans are capable of inflicting on each other. In Sarajevo, I ran from snipers shooting at innocent civilians who were being starved in a strangling siege. In Kigali, I happened to be around when the genocide started and saw machete-wielding mobs hunting down hapless victims. In Kabul and Grozny, I walked in residential neighborhoods reduced to rubble, their former inhabitants scrounging for food in the company of stray dogs. I had my share of craziness in Sierra Leone and Liberia where I was confronted many times with doped-up child soldiers. Recently, in Libya I smelled that sickening odor of piles of dead bodies left behind after another cowardly massacre. But nothing compares to the recent drug violence in Mexico, the sheer brutality and cruelty I was able to photograph and the even worse atrocities I did not see myself, but heard about in the news or watched in disgust in gory videos posted by the perpetrators themselves on YouTube. The violence in Mexico has passed a threshold and has become a war. A new kind of war. Traditionally, wars were waged between states with organized professional armies. The outcome was decided during confrontations on well-circumscribed battlefields. To quote Von Clausewitz, war was a continuation of diplomacy by other means. In the early nineties, a new form of warfare emerged: prolonged, low intensity conflicts, where ideology seemed lost and warring factions used ethnic and religious grievances as an excuse to grab power. Civilians were no longer accidental casualties, but were deliberately targeted. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Afghanistan were prime examples. War was no longer a means to an end. Rather the state of lawlessness, chaos and anarchy had become a goal in itself, a necessary precondition for warlords to exploit local resources drugs, minerals and engage in black marketeering. Political scientists like Kaldor and Mnkler call these conflicts New Wars. Typically, they are not financed through taxation by a central government, but by shady deals that the warring factions make with criminal elements. In Mexico, the concept of this New War has gone even beyond that point. No need for the warring factions to develop liaisons with international crime, simply because they are the criminals themselves. The one thing I found most shocking is the near total impunity that reigns in Mexico. 98% of murders in Ciudad Juarez are and probably will never be solved. One feels very vulnerable, knowing that at any moment, for any reason, one can be mowed down while the killers can walk away freely. Most murders are classified as Drug Related and are not even investigated. The forensic services anyway cant cope with the workload. Opportunistic, unorganized crime flourishes in this general atmosphere of lawlessness in which the state can no longer guarantee the safety of its citizens. Some parts of Mexico are de facto controlled by organized crime.

The endemic corruption of authorities is also beyond control, ranging from tacit complicity to active participation in illegal activities. Some brave individuals are sincerely ghting drug tra cking, but there is a large grey zone in which crime and law enforcement seamlessly merge. For many a policeman, it is not a moral choice, but a practical one: being paid or being killed. Plata o plomo silver or lead , as the saying goes. Documenting narco violence is a challenge. The warring factions are unknown, hidden actors that operate in a veil of secrecy. There are no pitched battles, rather unannounced strikes, hit-and-run actions. Contrary to guerilla movements with political agendas, DTOs (Drug Trafficking Organizations) do not have public relations departments that cater to journalists and try through them to win hearts and minds. If the cartels use journalists, it is to publicize their ferociousness so as to scare off the competition. Sometimes the murderers even call in the press to visit a fresh crime scene. With more than 81 journalists killed over the last decade, Mexico has become one of the deadliest places for the media. Mostly it is local, investigative reporters researching links between authorities and organized crime that are targeted. So far, foreign reporters have been left untouched. Maybe the death of a foreigner causes international uproar, maybe it is because visiting journalists just scratch the surface, reporting old stories that confirm the bad reputation the cartels already had. Ive been asked many times if I see a solution. Frankly, I dont see an easy one. It depends on the desired state of affairs. Acceptable levels of bloodshed? Domestication of organized crime? Peaceful coexistence with the cartels? As Howard Campbell points out, traffickers, consumers, bankers, corrupt politicians, all form a perfect self-perpetuating system that is hard to break. Some parts of the chain, however, can be weakened. Stricter gun control on the border would deny organized crime the enormous firepower it currently has. Tighter financial regulation to prevent money laundering would make illicit activities less attractive. Consumers have a responsibility too. Using mind-altering substances is as old as humanity, but some substances are extremely harmful to third parties. In the past, there have been consumer boycotts of products that support and lend legitimacy to repressive regimes. Such a campaign has never started around cocaine, a product that not only finances terror and murder in large parts of Latin America but through coca plantations causes deforestation and displacement of indigenous tribes as well. Legalization is a complicated issue, and not a good idea for addictive and destructive drugs such as crack and crystal meth. For marijuana it could work since it would take away an estimated 30% of the current prots of the cartels. However, the cartels are ruthless ultra-capitalist organizations that have shown great creativity and flexibility in maximizing their gains. If one branch becomes less profitable, they will try new venues.

Already, DTOs have diversified into human trafficking and the kidnapping and extortion business. Having worked mostly in social-political conflicts, many friends and colleagues wondered why I focused on what they interpreted as a marginal criminal problem. The drug violence in Mexico, however, is not an isolated case of gang warfare. It has immense social and political implications. The erosion of a civil society and its gradual takeover by organized crime, the nascency of a new class of excluded and disposable people that choose a criminal career that ends in certain death, the devaluation of human life; all these elements present a nightmarish scenario how our future could look like. The worst we can do is to close our eyes and ignore these developments. Brussels, June 2012