The Mexican president is faulted for starting a head-on assault on the heavily armed cartels without first gathering intelligence on them, without first preparing a trustworthy police force to take them on, without preparing the country for how rough it would turn out to be.
Americans have been attacked by vicious Mexican drug cartels without a full-scale military conflict breaking out.
Meanwhile, the eradication campaigns leave many already poverty-stricken farmers who are trapped between different warring cartels, without any kind of income at all.
That violence is fueled by gun-smuggling operations and the fact that American dealers can make bulk sales of military-style rifles favored by cartel gunmen without having to report those sales to federal authorities.
While they were cooperating, Pedro and Margarito continued to move drugs for the Sinaloa cartel, sometimes without the DEA's knowledge or authorization.
"Hired by Customs, but Working for the Cartels" ("War Without Borders" series, front page, Dec. 18) creates the impression that corruption is rampant among employees of United States Customs and Border Protection, or C.B.P., along our southwestern border.
Antônio Sampaio, a research associate for security and development at the institute, warns that Pena Nieto has been essentially ineffective in fighting the cartels and without more aggressive tactics, the frequency of murder will continue.
In these places, Corchado notes, nobody prints anything without cartel approval, including — it would seem — Sean Penn.
Moreover, proving that firms have operated as a cartel is difficult without some sort of "smoking gun", such as documents describing meetings in which price-fixing was discussed.
