The drug-cartel inspired brutality that marks everyday life in parts of northern Mexico is familiar to U.S. diplomatic officials and to many ordinary Americans, especially those who live in the region. For years though, they’ve been able to assume that the killings and other mayhem were confined to areas south of the border and that Americans, with few exceptions, were generally exempt from the violence. It may no longer be safe to make that assumption.
Three killings just over a week ago in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, challenge the long-standing notions of who is safe in the region.
Three U.S. citizens –an a pregnant employee of the U.S. consulate, her husband and the husband of another U.S. employee — were gunned down in broad daylight on the street in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Even veteran security officials remain unsure if the victims were targeted to send a message to the United States that its citizens are no longer exempt from the cross-border warfare, or if the events were tragic accidents. Either is possible.
Life is cheap in Ciudad Juarez. More than 2,600 individuals were killed there last year — most but not all of them related in some way to drug trafficking. It is possible that the trio of American citizens was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The more likely scenario, many officials agree, is that the Americans, who were driving back to their homes following a birthday party, were gunned down on orders from drug lords intent on expanding their hold on the multibillion-dollar U.S. drug market. If that proves to be the case, the killings are a message that is hard to ignore.
Mexico’s drug traffickers, drug enforcement officials report, have established outposts in some American cities. Different cartels continue to battle for control over lucrative segments of the drug market, and there is no market richer than that in the United States. It is increasingly apparent that the cartels will kill anyone — U.S. citizen or not, who directly or indirectly interferes with their operations. The killings in Ciudad Juarez might have been ordered to reinforce that message.
The U.S. response must be firm. It should work with Mexican authorities to pursue the killers and others of their ilk. To that end, President Obama is reportedly studying the possibility of increasing U.S. assistance to Mexico so it can step up its effort to take down the drug cartels. That might help, but recent history suggests that it is quite difficult to win a shoot-out with well-entrenched dealers armed with automatic weapons and grenades.
There is another way to address the problem. The power and influence of the drug cartels rise and fall in concert with U.S. demand for their product. It will be difficult to do, but reducing that demand is the first step in controlling cross-border drug traffic and reducing the killing and mayhem that accompanies it.