However, in Mexico, because of the sensitive nature of their sovereignty in light of previous conflicts with the U.S., the government, the government tends to act as a buffer against U.S. law enforcement pressure. Yet, even with that shelter, the cartels are loathe to provoke an American response by attacking American personnel, interests or even by deploying large IEDs in their attacks against other Mexicans.
In part this is because the U.S. has snatched Mexican nationals when Americans have been killed or targeted, and also because of the recent experience in Columbia where Pablo Escobar stepped so far over the line that the Colombian government invited the Americans in with the approval of their public.
The choice for the article's Hot Stratfor Babe obviously had to be Lupe Vélez, a.k.a. The Mexican Spitfire. I doubt I need to explain why I made such a no-brainer of a selection, but for the small minority of readers that may be puzzled by the choice -- Ms Vélez was married to Johnny Weissmuller. Get it? Mexican/American relations. Eh? Eh? Oh, never mind... just go with it.
Lupe was born in Mexico and started her career as a dancer there. She moved to the States and worked in vaudeville, where she was spotted and began her movie career during the silent era. She sucessfully transitioned to talkies, but eventually left film for Broadway. She returned to Hollywood in 1939 where she resumed her film career.
Along with being married to Weissmuller for 5 years, she also had an affair with Gary Cooper. She got pregnant, either by Cooper or an actor named Harald Maresch, and ended up committing suicide with sleeping pills when the shame of the thought of an illegitimate child, which was perhaps fueled her natural mania. A rumor spread after her death that she had been found drowned in her toilet, either because she passed out vomiting or because she tripped, bonked her head against the toilet and knocked herself unconscious in the process.
I've included a video after the article that includes a number of clips of Lupe from various movies. She jokes, gets cutely angry, sings, dances and gets in a food fight. Toilet death rumors aside, nothing but the finest for this week's Hot Stratfor Babe.
THE BUFFER BETWEEN MEXICAN CARTELS AND THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
By Scott Stewart. August 18, 2011
It is summer in Juarez, and again this year we find the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF), also known as the Juarez cartel, under pressure and making threats. At this time in 2010, La Linea, the VCF's enforcer arm, detonated a small improvised explosive device (IED) inside a car in Juarez and killed two federal agents, one municipal police officer and an emergency medical technician and wounded nine other people. La Linea threatened to employ a far larger IED (100 kilograms) if the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not investigate the head of Chihuahua State Police intelligence, whom the VCF claimed was working for the Sinaloa Federation.
La Linea did attempt to employ another IED on Sept. 10, 2010, but this device, which failed to detonate, contained only 16 kilograms of explosives, far less than the 100 kilograms that the group had threatened to use.
Fast-forward a year, and we see the VCF still under unrelenting pressure from the Sinaloa Federation and still making threats. On July 15, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez released a message warning that, according to intelligence it had in hand, a cartel may be targeting the consulate or points of entry into the United States. On July 27, "narcomantas" -- banners inscribed with messages from drug cartels -- appeared in Juarez and Chihuahua signed by La Linea and including explicit threats against the DEA and employees of the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. Two days after the narcomantas appeared, Jose Antonio "El Diego" Acosta Hernandez, a senior La Linea leader whose name was mentioned in the messages, was arrested by Mexican authorities aided by intelligence from the U.S. government. Acosta is also believed to have been responsible for planning La Linea's past IED attacks.
As we have discussed in our coverage of the drug war in Mexico, Mexican cartels, including the VCF, clearly possess the capability to construct and employ large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) -- truck bombs -- and yet they have chosen not to. These groups are not averse to bloodshed, or even outright barbarity, when they believe it is useful. Their decision to abstain from certain activities, such as employing truck bombs or targeting a U.S. Consulate, indicates that there must be compelling strategic reasons for doing so. After all, groups in Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq have demonstrated that truck bombs are a very effective means of killing perceived enemies and of sending strong messages.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the Mexican cartels to abstain from such activities is that they do not consider them to be in their best interest. One important part of their calculation is that such activities would remove the main buffer that is currently insulating them from the full force of the U.S. government: the Mexican government.
The Buffer
Despite their public manifestations of machismo, the cartel leaders clearly fear and respect the strength of the world's only superpower. This is evidenced by the distinct change in cartel activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a certain operational downshift routinely occurs. In Mexico, the cartels have the freedom to operate far more brazenly than they can in the United States, in terms of both drug trafficking and acts of violence. Shipments of narcotics traveling through Mexico tend to be far larger than shipments moving into and through the United States. When these large shipments reach the border they are taken to stash houses on the Mexican side, where they are typically divided into smaller quantities for transport into and through the United States.
As for violence, while the cartels do kill people on the U.S. side of the border, their use of violence there tends to be far more discreet; it has certainly not yet incorporated the dramatic flair that is frequently seen on the Mexican side, where bodies are often dismembered or hung from pedestrian bridges over major thoroughfares. The cartels are also careful not to assassinate high-profile public figures such as police chiefs, mayors and reporters in the United States, as they frequently do in Mexico.
The border does more than just alter the activities of the cartels, however. It also constrains the activities of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These agencies cannot pursue cartels on the Mexican side of the border with the same vigor that they exercise on the U.S. side. Occasionally, the U.S. government will succeed in luring a wanted Mexican cartel leader outside of Mexico, as it did in the August 2006 arrest of Javier Arellano Felix, or catch one operating in the United States like Javier's oldest brother, Francisco Arellano Felix. By and large, however, most wanted cartel figures remain in Mexico, out of the reach of U.S. law. [continued after the jump]
