beginning -- >> right. >> -- the accusation. [inaudible conversations] >> all right, 30 seconds, jurors. [inaudible conversations] >> five seconds, jurors. two seconds, jurors. [laughter] all right, jury, time's up.

foreman, have you reached a verdict? [inaudible conversations] they are -- they will, mark. i'm the judge today. [laughter] you can do it next year. they're tallying the votes, ladies and gentlemen. it should be just a moment. [laughter] all right. will the defense rise. mr. foreman, have you reached a verdict? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i know the suspense is killing all of you. [laughter] these lights are killing me. [laughter] [inaudible conversations]

>> we just need a majority, not a unanimous vote. >> [inaudible] >> kangaroo court. foreman, would you, please, read the verdict? >> we, the jury find -- we, the jury find the defendant guilty. [cheers and applause] >> order, order! order! [applause] the judge, i am going to now -- >> 5-7. >> hey, not bad. >> 5-7, okay. [applause] you did say guilty, did you not? okay. ms. lee, professor shoemaker, and you and your union brothers and sisters have been found guilty of subverting the public

good and fine -- and the fine citizens of this great nation. therefore, with the powers vested in me i hereby condemn you and your new leaders to receive measly social security benefits instead of your cushy teachers' pensions -- [laughter] and subject you and your unions to obamacare rules rather than the current exemption. [applause] you'll also be condemned to spend the next 24 hours confined to a feather bed here in bally's hotel where scabs will be subject to whips and lashes. foreman wood, take them away. [laughter] [applause] >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> john gipler talks about the drug war in mexico which has

claimed the lives of 34,000 mexicans since 2006 and the involvement of the mexican army and police in the drug trade. he spoke at moe's books in berkeley, california. [applause] >> thanks very much, and thanks to moe's books, and thanks to everybody for coming out tonight. i look forward to our, um, discussion. in late march, 2010, a photographer working for a company in monterey, north mexico got a call. his editor said there'd been a shootout, so he's driving out to the region in the outskirts of monterrey city. and his editor calls back and says, no, it's not a shootout, but it looks like a body's been dumped out in this field. go ahead and get the picture anyway. so he keeps on driving, gets out to the scene before any other reporters. when he gets out there, there's

only a municipal police truck, a few police chatting by the truck. the body's been taped off, but the army and state police haven't arrived yet, and there are no other reporters. so paco's able to get close and get to work. he approaches the body and starts taking photographs. after he's taken a few photographs, the body's wrapped up in a blanket. there's several theatrical styles of execution taking place in the context of the current drug war which have, um, their own names now in spanish. this would be, um, enblanketted. there's also -- [speaking in native tongue] all these terms refer to the style in which an execution is presented to the world. so this body wrapped up in a blanket, bullet through the head in a barren field x -- and paco is taking photographs. he glances on his screen and

recognizes the color of the t-shirt. he looks at it more closely on his digital camera, and he recognizes this kind of brown shirt with the strange orange letter b on his chest. and he starlets to freak out. he goes back to his car, opens up his laptop, checks out his photographs. the day before, sunday, there had been a shootout in another region outside of month ray, and paco had gone to cover the shootout. the mexican navy had already cordoned off the area and had several people who had been wounded or apprehended in a branch of the municipal police office. and then at one point led them out, the navy, custody of the soldiers with their flak jackets and bullet-proof vests and their faces covered with face masks, kevlar helmets and assault rifles, led these people out of the room. at that moment, paco was there,

and he was taking photographs. he took a photograph of a man wearing a brown shirt with an orange letter b on it. in that moment, he was in navy custody, and he was being led by several masked uniform navy commandos into a helicopter. fifteen hours later, he was found dead, his body wrapped up in a blanket with a bullet to the head about three miles away from the naval base. in the drug war, the current logic is you're dead, you're dirty. you're killed not only in your life, but also in your name and in your history. the body is presented to the world as a mass of death without a name, without a personhood, without humanity. that is one of the first acts of stripping away the possibility of knowledge as well as humanity as well as any ability to fight, understand and also fight what's happening. in the logic of the drug war,

you're dead, you're dirty. felipe calderon, president of mexico since december 2005, told cnn in an interview 90% of the executions that have taken place during his term correspond to the various criminal gangs fighting over territory, um, and under such pressure due to the warring of the drug warring of the government, the police operations and the military operations against them, under such pressure that they are escalating their combat over control of territory and fighting each other, and this is the logic of all of the death. the bodies that we see daily, the execution headlines. he didn't cited, calderon didn't cite any kind of figure or study to justify that number, but that number corresponds rather insidiously that is backed up with documentation. and that is that the mexican federal government investigates less than 5% of the murders that have taken place since the drug

war. which, actually, corresponds rather neatly to the generate of guaranteed impunity in mexico for the act of murder. but in the case of the drug war since 2006 more than 41,000 people have been executed. 95% of those 41,000, those murders are guaranteed impunity, or the very fact there's not even an investigation opened into the act of murder. so we see these two numbers coincide, unfortunately, rather neatly. the 90% the president says with no supporting documentation corresponds to these drug war cartels battling each other, um, or drug cartels battling each other and the 95% that corresponds to the fact of no investigation. so murder and impunity, these are the two central facts that set the coordinates for our trying to approach an understanding of what's happening. um, and first what they tell

you. they tell you that drugs are illegal, illegal drugs, those that are illegal are illegal because they are very harmful for your health, and and they promote crime. they create criminals. all right, so the government is waging a war on drugs, that's how desperately and ardently they want to protect you against these drugs, these substances that are so dangerous. and this war at its highest pitch leads to unfortunate acts of violence that are inevitable as these criminals fight each other but can be eventually overcome with the ultimate victory of the government. in their war on drugs. that is a very clean story. um, it fits into a nice package, and it spire liquor responds to fiction. there's no basis in the reality of a 40 years' drug war, that story to what we've seen. in 40 years we've seen the

explosion of a marketplace. there are more drugs available on the market at lower prices now than at almost any time in history. um, and we've seen the united states particularly how drug laws have reconfigured in the argument of michelle alexander in her book, "the new jim you," the legalized segregation of the jim you era into drug war policies that colorize largely african-americans and has created really in the last 20 years since the reagan administration the largest per capita incarceration population in the world, the vast majority of -- or disproportionately african-americans on drug charges. this, that's the neat story. but the story they don't want people to say, i don't think, is that drugs are a major global industry. the united nations estimates that between $350 and $500 billion a year are generated in

cash in the global narcotics market place. that's a huge transnational industry. in fact, um, "forbes" magazine has taken to including the man suspected to be mexico's largest so-called drug lord in their list of billionaires. and in a rare moment of honesty of capitalism, the first year that they listed him in the listed billionaires, specifically they'll have the list, and then it'll say industry, like, how this individual generated their fortune. usually they don't say theft, but what they will say, for example, is carlos lind, industry: telecommunications. in and in this case, joaquin. industry: shipping. which i thought was a very rare

and brilliant moment of honesty in "forbes" reporting on, you know, the true nature of the economic activity of the individual they're including in their list of billionaires. drugs have become a major global industry. illegality, i think, structures -- an interesting way, perhaps, to think about illegality as the principle feature structuring that global marketplace. um, and it does so in two, perhaps, two principles. maybe three. number one, illegality increases the value of the commodity. it becomes a part of the commodity because the risk is so high, it justifies these incredible price markups. there's estimated somewhere around a 3,000% price markup between the coca leaf that is sold, you know, by the producer in the andes to the cut cocaine that is finally sold and powder cocaine sold to an end user in the united states. um, illegality also structures

the marketplace in another way. think about the example of books. the principle structuring features of the publishing industry is physical weight, bulk. um, one of the largest expenses of publishing houses is shipping, right? like, physically moving their product all around the country and around the world. and, in fact, that's one of the reasons why the publishing industry is undergoing such spence and rapid changes as -- intense and rapid changes as new technologies have revised ways to get completely around that principle obstacle or cost to the marketplace, so digital technology and what that will do. in the drug market, illegality, i think s kind of a parallel obstacle. you have to move the products to ship them, but you have to ship them across borders in a way that is not officially seen because they're illegal. so you have to, it's almost like you have to budget this ability into your shipping industry. and one of the principle ways you do that or the main way you

have to do that is hire employees directly inside the state. you have to have people work anything the borders, in the the customs, in police forces and at various levels of government in every country. corruption is not a unique feature. i think the united states government and media enjoy the perhaps subconscious, even times very conscious and xenophobic exportation of chaos to other countries. colombia is this, you know, bandit, happy corrupt place. or mexico now is this place that is inherently corrupt. that idea is, i think, entirely bogus and useful only in a logic of racial discrimination. corruption is a central -- not corruption, actually. we should question that. direct participation in the industry is a necessary functioning of the industry, and if united nations says somewhere between $350 and $500 billion generated a year, we know that it is a thriving industry.

so that means it must have a lot of employees. um, corruption also, i think, is almost a last gasp effort to maintain some perception of legitimacy of the state. like, well, no, it's just some bad apple, some individual who either through greed or through low salaries or through insane social pressures has to give in and go to the bad side. it still fits in this cops and robbers good and bad logic which i think is entirely use rest in understanding the -- useless in understanding the scale of the current global marketplace. it's an imlegal industry. illegality is a necessary feature of that industry, and if product is illegal, you have to ship it over borders, you have to do so with the direct participation of people inside the structure of the state. so a third way that illegality is an essential feature of the industry, and can that is with the murder. if your product is illegal, if

moving the product is illegal -- and often cases producing or growing the product is illegal, and if someone steals your product, you can't go to the police, at least officially. you can go to them invisibly, right? but you can't simply call 911 and say somebody just took my stash. what that means is when you have conflicts inside an illegal industry, you have to, obviously, solve them outside the structure of the open institution of the law. and, thus, as we've seen, sadly, murder becomes, it seems, the most cost effective way to engage in conflict resolution when your product is illegal. now, that leads us to an important point. the logic, as we said with calderon's quote to cnn, is that all these -- the people being killed right now in mexico are the result of this war between various organizations. that ties into this idea that illegality generates murder. that's true. but that murder, while it takes

place, does not explain what's happened in mexico over the past four and a half years. a brief bit of history. in 2006 calderon -- 2006 was the year of incredible social upheaval, social mobilizations, protest movements in mexico. people took to the nation's streets for the first time in many years conducting a nationwide tour called the other campaign which is a national mobilizing grassroots-mobilizing effort that traveled through 20 states before stopping in mexico city after a mass police raid on the town may 4th and then staying in mexico city and then later traveling on to northern parts of the country, eventually traveling to all of the states in mexico. in woe hack ca, an annual teachers' strike was brutally repressed in 2006, and the popular rejection of that act of presentation led to a six month

popular uprising, the creation of the people's popular assemble which, effectively, occupied peacefully and held control of the city for almost six months. after the july 2nd elections in mexico city, massive protest movements alleging fraud had been employed in the service of calderon's victory. the opposition candidate called hundreds of thousands of people to occupy the streets. they occupied the main city square of mexico city, shut down the central downtown avenue for almost two months. um, mexico in 2006 was in the grip of an incredibly inspiring, massively protest movement, mobilizations with massive participation. when calderon takes office december 3rd, 2006, first off, he had to sneak in the back door

at midnight for his inauguration ceremony. i was with several friends in a bar in downtown mexico city, and we were chatting, and we noticed every once in a while we could see the soccer game, and all of a sudden we looked up and there was calderon with the presidential sash across his chest, and we're like, wait, what's this? what time is it? he snuck in the back door because of the intense protests that had tried to take control of the days inside the senate. calderon's first actions in office were to raise the salaries of the mexican army generals, to appear in public in military uniform and then to send the army into the streets to wage a so-called war on drugs. when calderon took office the, or the year before in 2005 there were less than a thousand executions related to the drug trade in mexico. in 2006 that number had gone up to around a thousand. in 2007 it would triple. in 2008 it would double.

in the 2010 it would double again, and so on. by the year 2010 more than 13,000 people were executed that year alone in mexico leading to the number now of more than 41,000. that context is very important. when calderon takes office, drugs and drug violence -- although it was real and it was taking police station -- was not the threat, the perception or danger to society that it has now actually become. also consider the disparity. when protesters fought back against police oppression against a vendors' march in a tiny marketplace, that led to more than later 3,500 federal police smacking down on the town, arresting more than 200 people in. forty women were driven out to the countryside and raped by police who had condoms in their uniforms that day. when a very real act of violence in relation to the so-called drug war took place a little bit

later that month, that was made in 2006, five heads were rolled out onto the disco floor. there was no swarming with 3,500 federal police officers. the acts speak to the perception of the threat. social mobilization from the perspective of the state was an intense threat. in that year, 2006, the campaign year, every candidate just try try -- tried to -- [inaudible] what calderon did was kind of a mexican version of the preemptive war of george bush, weapons of mass destruction in iraq. calderon has a real perceived threat of his own illegitimacy and created a war to strive for some kind of perception of legitimacy through military action in the streets and, also, to preemptively act against the

incredible social movements and popular uprisings that had gripped the country over the previous 12 months. and then the facts speak for themselves. take the case of ciudad juarez. in 2008 in ciudad juarez there were around 1500 executions. calderon sent the army into si dad juarez. a year later the execution rate doubled. he replaced the army with the federal police, and the execution rate went up by 50%. now si dad juarez is a city in which you cannot travel or be outside for more than five minutes without seeing an armed convoy of either the army, the navy or the militarized federal police pass by you in the street, men wearing masks, assault rifles pointed at people in the streets. and yet every day around ten people are executed in that city, and no one apparently is ever found. less than 5% of the homicides are even investigated. the drug war has its deepest

roots in racialized forms of discrimination and social control. the first drug, anti-drug war in the united states is an 1875 ordnance against opium in san francisco, california, part of an entire sweep of legalized forms of discriminating against and marginalizing, excluding exe repressing the chinese migrant population. that history continues up until the reagan era with the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing laws, the mandatory sentences of five years for possession of minor crack cocaine which created criminalized an entire generation of young african-american men. the drug war also has its deepest roots in obscuring and wrapping up the lodger of u.s. imperialism, both the involvement of the cia directly in the drug trade to finance the contras in nicaragua exposed by

gary webb in his 1996 series "dark alliance." since documented, of course, cia participation in the drug craid dates -- trade, dates back to the 1950s and '60s in southeast asia. but the continuing logic of u.s. intervention throughout latin america justified by the perceived threat of drug trafficking and drug lords. and yet every year we see that the industry thrives. the drugs arrive in the cities, people are consuming them. real issues of substance abuse, community health issues are completely ignored because since the substance is simply deemed illegal, the user is a criminal and a public health or a social health response is completely denied, so any kind of harm reduction strategies, um, are a massive investment in public education, health clinics instead of police forces and criminalization is pursued. and there again one of the key facts of the insidious nature, i

think, of the drug war where you have this perception of cartels and cash and kind of cowboy or cops and robbers image of a black market. and that leads us to forget the banality of so much of the, um, the wealth generated by the war itself. police forces in the united states that are funded through asset forfeiture laws, the entire, you know, appropriations budget that year after year has expanded to more than $15 billion a year for policing the prison industrial complex that has completely exploded as a response to the creation of the largest per capita incarcerated population in the world directly linked to the drug war. in 1989 there are more people in prison in the united states on drugs, minor drug charges than had been imprisoned for any charge 20 years prior. um, that banality of wealth,

also, is a deeply, i think, rooted part of the industry itself. so when we actually even think about these united nations estimates like 350 to 500 billion dollars a year, that excludes, actually, all the wealth generated inside the normal functioning of the government waging the war, the military and police and prison budgets. which leads to, i think, a question i just want to pose. um, who's benefits from all of this? -- who's benefiting from all of this? drug users, they're getting the same drugs, and if anything, they're harmed by the fact that people who would want to seek treatment or who would want to have access to paraphernalia that's safe, that's not contaminated with hiv or hepatitis c, they're the people at the most risk. and, of course, there's also the risk of through the very

criminalization of their activity they could be caught, thrown in jail, their lives ruined. um, who benefits? police forces benefit, the state, seems to me, benefits a lot. capital seems to benefit. in 2008 when the speculative markets crashed paris in the united states and then also globally, the united nations put out their special office on organized crime put out a little bill tin that few -- bulletin that few paid attention to saying they predicted $350 billion u.s. dollars successfully laundered into the global economy from the drug trade. that number ease fits into their annual estimates, so there's nothing unusual there. but what's interested is in that a year that was unusual for the functioning of banks, something steady seemed to have been rather useful. the drug, i read about this in the london observer, and the article said, you know, in 2008

this influx of drug cash effectively saved millions of banks. indeed, in mexico in 2010 the federal treasurer said, um, that there is an estimated $10 billion in cash, and this is just what he publicly admitted to in the mexican banking system annually that cannot be accounted for in the normal functioning of the economy. these numbers are rough. they're estimates. they're suspect, but they also speak to the enormous scale of the industry. commodities have always been linked to imperialism. think about the very, like, the birth of capitalism as a system, the birth of imperialism as a global phenomenon. with the invasion of the americas, right? and here kind of drawing on the theses of sociologists who talk about how the concept of modernity, imperialism and capitalism were all built at the

same time together, interwoven. and that was largely upon slave labor, appropriation of labor, appropriation of land, land theft, invasion and commodity trades, principally mining. in the americas, bold new world to european global markets. um, in what way has the drug global industry become a new kind of commodity used in, perhaps, a new form of colonialism? in what ways has the drug law structure served to appropriate labor, what the marxists talk about original accumulation? not only a form of cash money, but also of labor through the creation of a massively-incarcerated under class in the united states. in what way has the drug economy benefited, for example, intimately link today the north american free trade agreement.

in the state of -- one sowsh -- southern state of mexico i travel today a poppy-producing region and spoke to people who told me up until the 1990s in their community which is a four or five-hour drive to the nearest paved road but about a ten-hour drive to the latest market -- nearest marketplace, so they were entirely dependent on middle people who would drive out to the communities, largely sold avocados until the late 1990s. the only thing people would travel that far to buy was poppies for the heroin trade. what if we were to reorient our questioning about this entire logic about a drug war away from proven failures, the proven failure of interdiction and criminalization to address, actually, real social community health issues of substance abuse, away from a cop and robbers, good guys and bad logic

of grand capos and police officers valiantly fighting the war on drug t. and each the concept of corruption which serves to maintain the overall integrity, the perception of the state. and we thought about this simply as a huge global industry, illegality being its structuring feature. and in what way is that linked to rather insidious activities carried out by states? i think the lens of the failure of the drug war leads us to see rather clearly some of the most endemic and horrible problems for our contemporary society. it looks through the failure of the drug war into the united states, you immediately see racialized forms of social control and u.s. imperialism abroad. in mexico if you look through the lens of the drug war, you immediately see the fundamentally colossal issue in be mexican politics of impunity. and, in fact, the state has been constructed over 71 years, a

single party, to entrench a system of mafia-like political power that is untouchable. you also look through that lens and see factors of internal colonialism in mexico, a phrase taken from the sociologist who talked about internal colonialism as a way to you said the state's relationship to the indigenous populations of mexico. and, indeed, mexico, the logic of the drug war has been used for decades and is still used as a logic of militarization. way before calderon sent the army into the streets across the country, previous administrations had done so in regions largely with the presence of indigenous rights, land organizations and also armed movements. um, i think if you start with the outrageous situation of violence in many mexico today, the proliferation of scenes of massacres, theatrical

presentation of murder, um, that act of violence is a first point. but it can't be understood in any way disarticulated from the broader culture of impunity first and the globalized industry of the drug war. and the birthplace and principle exportation hub of the prohibition regime. um, if you want to stop the murder, i think the first thing you have to understand is that industry itself and the way it's structured. but also even decriminalization, some form of regulation won't immediately make everything kind of hunky-dory. we can imagine the world where the world's richest man immediately boys up all the -- buys up all the poppy plantations and, you know, starts selling his labeled,

slick packs of marijuana cigarettes, you know, at $25 or $30 a box. um, and, you know, the producing regions are still enmeshed in institutionally-created and locked in forms of social marginalization. and poverty. um, i think we've seen the capitalist class begin to step away from the rhetoric of drug war. recently, the global policy commission or global commission on drug policy put out a report strongly arguing for decorrallization. president -- decriminalization. president carter argued for decriminalization. figures off as vicente fox have argued for that. that might be a first step. but still we should take this moment of this horrid violence and look through it to see what are really the deep issues at root. i think i'll try to leave it

there otherwise i'll talk for way too long. the book contains a lot of stories, and i've tried to provide an analytical structure of sorts to question the myths, i think, of cops and robbers, a true drug war. those myths have to be shattered before any kind of deep understanding and, thus, effect e political or social action can be engaged in. and the book largely chronicles the experiences of mexican journalists working for local media in this some of the most conflicted regions of the country. ciudad juarez, chihuahua state as well as in monterey and also profiles several endemic cases of violence where there were survivors i was able to speak with, also family members of people who fell victim to the violence. i try tried to take a side viewd

not simply go back and forth between the state, the police who have easy access, don't need, you know, a shoe string alternative reporter to seek them out as much. and also the killers. i wasn't looking to score a clandestine interview. but that hasn't been seen as much in english in the united states from the people living in the region. indeed, one of the reporters i profile in the book, javier value dead, when i was asking him, because i was asking these reporters how can you do a good job writing this? he said, don't just come here and count the dead. profile the stories of fear. the culture of what this is going to a society where 16-year-old kids have already gotten used to seeing bodies in the seat. people think, assume that they won'tly to make their mid --

they won't live to make their mid 20s, question this culture of fear which is a kind of let's and perhaps even worse. thanks a lot. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> absolutely. yeah, yeah, yeah. sorry, i hoped to stop early. >> can you talk about the relationship between the different cartels and the political parties or groups that they may be linked to? >> absolutely. um, there is, there's a widespread now. three years ago it was whispered, and now it's discussed openly, speculation that when calderon entered office and be he went out to wage his war he targeted pretty much every organization in the country except the one

considered to be the largest and the strongest which is often referred to as the see that low what cartel. so there's this assumption that the bulk of the federal government is at least in some way supporting the cartel. some folks will say they're directly, you know, receiving money from them and just working with them. other folks will say they're just targeting everyone else. and, indeed, several studies, one conducts by the reporterrers which analyzed arrest records in chihuahua state and found that 90%, 90-something percent of the arrests corresponded to the enemies of the so-called cartel, largely thai the juarez cartel. and national public radio here in the united states did a similar study of the mexican federal attorney general's arrest records and found that 33% -- 89% of those arrests corresponded to members of the so-called, you know, cartels that were enemies. there's one known as the gulf,

the zetas which split off in 2010, the -- [inaudible] and, actually, in only the past, you know, four years new names have popped up. there's several stories of the groups that ethically split. and while these things correspond to reality, for example, the split between the cartel that is now being called the cartel pacifico, um, that happened. that took place and was documented, and the reporters, for example, describe how that tore it kind of apart in 2008, 2009. javier valdez described it to me. imagine a shootout in a house where the family divides and people are firing at each other. that is what it was like to live there during the time because these people had been so connected for generations. they were, you know, godfathers and mothers to each other's children, and they were cousins,

to, obviously, knew where each other lived and it made an incredibly desperate and violent situation. but also i think there are a couple of things to be accepted by the cartels themselves. i think that idea reinforces an assumption that these organizations exist entirely. and they have somewhat quasi mystic character which i don't think is accurate at all. as i've said, they cannot function if they don't have direct participation from state employeings. and that happens at every level. so you'll have -- and that's why sometimes the violence can get very intense because either groups split, and they have contacts in every level of state police, municipal police, sometimes they're going to be general agents, and so information becomes a prime commodity in -- also a second

thing, i think questioning the romantic notion at least of the cartel is necessary. it doesn't mean that contrasting organizations don't exist, they do. and individuals with names and addresses like the -- [speaking spanish] but for those organizations to function as they do, they have to have very deep relationships inside the state which is precisely your question. and it's usually multifaceted and constantly shifting. compared to -- i've never done this, but a friend of min once was involved in ice climbing. you think something's solid, and all of a sudden a yes vaz opens -- crevasse opens and you fall 200 feet. that's my perception of trying to navigate this world of drug trafficking organizations and their relationships to the different factions of the state. because you think you're on solid ground for a moment, and then something happens, and it entirely blows up and divides

and where you thought you stood, there's now nothing beneath your feet. and, indeed, it makes sense in that your organizations, you know, if illegality is the structuring factor of the marketplace, then invisibility is, you know, the prime objective, so you don't want information to be public. and especially participants in the state have to keep their participation outside of public view. so that's why it's always intensely murky. and there are people like many of the reporters i spend time with who grew up in these cities. they raised their families there, they work there, they publish their stories there, they know who's who. they know which organizations work with them, which businesses are owned by which people to launder money. javier valdez, again, he would tell me -- we can't publish 90 president of what we know because the next day there'd be an armed squad outside my house, and i'd be his are -- history. the director told me, it'd be

easy to be a hero. i could publish everything i know, and tomorrow you'd walk in this office, and there'd be a little black ribbon with my name on it. so, but there's a second, i think, interesting thing to be questioned with this whole idea of the cartels. can anybody name who's the main couple in the united states? or can anybody name the different names of the organizations in the united states? isn't that interesting? like, we have this soap opera vision of the life, epic stories of -- [speaking spanish] we know, like, epically all of their histories and lineages and families, and, you know, we hear the stories of their ranches, and el chap bomar ris an 18-year-old, and the senators get off the plane, and we've got all of these stories about that which gets into the u.s. media, and we don't know the name of a single drug -- major national drug trafficking organization in the united states. the u.s. government and the media will just typically talk

about all these media stories about the penetration of the mexican cartels into the united states. and, what in the global economy has stayed the same for 15 years? not much. so the number suspect that again if we take it as an indication of scale, that still makes drugs largest single source of cash in the mexican economy.

that is across the border. they get it across the border in a cut again they cut it again and then they sell it here for the price market goes up again several 100%. the big money is here. is not in mexico and not in colombia. it is not in guatemala. the real big monies here and yet you don't know. that work has been done and i think that is a part of this idea that the united states nydia culture and definitely the government enjoys -- they don't do it on purpose -- this perception of chaos coming from other regions and coming from order the border and even the language i remember in 2009 and 2010 people were talking about the spillover violence. they were terrified there would be spillover violence in the mexican drug war. in 2010, 3111 people were executed in impunity across the border. there were five homicides. one was a homicide suicide. all were cleared up. spillover violence? and yet there is no question that every day drug war violence takes place and -- in the united

states. in mexico, the society is sufficiently outraged to at least keep count. we can say since december 2006, 41,000 people have been executed, more than in the so-called drug war. what is the figure in the united states? how many people are killed every year and violence related to the drug trade? whether whether or not not exist combating over territory or deals gone wrong over the police brutality or whether not as a result of police and the assumption in the case of mexico directly aiding one organization over another, whether not it is one form of crime being masquerade as another? there is a case that is very implemented in -- were the young reporters went out to cover and execution scene and the body was all wrapped up. there was a narco-message stepped into the chest that says don't cross the line referring to the cartel. and the reporter saw a woman crying and approached her and

started the conversation it turned out this woman was this young man's mother. the woman told a story that her son had been kidnapped and held for ransom. the family scraped together the ransom money and paid it, and the kidnapper said okay you guys have money? we wanted again so twice the rent. again, scraped together everything, put together as much as they could, gave it to the kidnappers and the next thing they knew however many days or weeks later their son was found wrapped up in a blanket with a narco-messaged in his chess. is a form of violence that has nothing to do with the drug trade in this case or if it does it is not that the person receiving that violence may be the killers are moonlighting as kidnappers in addition to their other activities, and indeed one of the kind of lines in the book is the drug industry over the past several years has expanded in the global economy has enjoyed diversifying its investment portfolio. you see an incredible exponential explosion of human

trafficking, kidnapping across mexico, the absolute takeover of the undocumented labor migration along the border by the drug trafficking organizations. recently "the new york times" published an article saying it is over. the whole historic migration of mexicans to the united states to work here has slowed to a trickle they said and the result or why come increase border security and increased economic prosperity in mexico. "the new york times" reporters did not report the several year recession in mexico and is not recovered from and did not report on the increased by over 10% of people living in poverty is defined by the united nations in 2010 and they didn't report on the fact that the drug trafficking organizations and all of their relationships in the state have completely taken over the border. and they have been kidnapping directly migrants, labor migrants at least since 2007. some of the first cases i

documented as i was reporting along the border. so that is a terribly long answer to your question which i probably did not even answer. next? >> i was just -- i was just wondering what your thoughts are on the quest to legalize marijuana and how that might affect things? >> that is complex. i personally -- i think drug prohibition has been a colossal wretched failure and it should be stopped. i think that is not a route even the deepest problem. the deeper problems are the construction of the state, our political system known as capitalism. so, the short answer is, i mean it is part of a movement strategy to chip away the prohibition regime which could

also be combined i would think with other forms of social mobilization for this country to radically change society. i would fully supported. i think that there was a lot of opposition to a think a proposition 19 on several levels. one was that the way the law was written it would give counties control to prohibit and so that would be a step backward in terms of the existing statewide medical merrill bonna legislation and then also the people involved in the trade counterculture or hippy though they may be who are making a lot of money with marijuana and it is now quasi-it legal, quasi-legal stayed in california. and they would probably lose money if they legalize it. i think i was part of also a lot of folks opposing, the growers and people directly involved in the medical marijuana movement as well as other factions of that movement. i think, again if legal i think marijuana is a step in a much

longer series of social actions than i think is a good step, but it must be seen as what it is is a very small step. >> i have not read your book yet, but i want to, and i was just wondering what you feel like we need to do? what is the next step and i say we because obviously as he said the united states is very much a part of the problem as much as everything going on in mexico, so where do you begin with everything that is going on? you may have answered this question in the book. [inaudible] >> thanks a lot. that is kind of what can be done and that is always the hardest and perhaps the most urgent question. a few thoughts, what would a direct action campaign in the united states against the drug

war look like? what kind of creative social mobilizations could be carried out here? i fully agree that in the political context of the united states which is united states which is you take the global systems. view of the drug industry, it is almost at ground zero in that it is the principle market consumption zone as well as the principle political machine exporting the prohibition regime globally. so the people, the popular movement perhaps in conjunction with legal strategies and trying to get felt -- ballot initiatives and state laws passed in the prohibition and also creating initiatives or reduction to health clinics can be very important and personally i'm interested in what would it look like you people in the united states became outraged at the injustice that is the everyday drug war in the united states and really took on the grassroots direct action approach? one example in mexico, and in

mexico the fact, just the overwhelming brutality of the violence in the murder in the absolute culture of impunity which is taking place has been, has had a wake-up effect, an intensive wake up in effect for the population. there's the story of a man whose son was killed in late march this year, and when his son was killed he was in a poetry conference in the philippines and flew back to mexico. he was immediately confronted by the mexican national media. since he was a famous person, he was a poet, kind of a famous person known in the political culture and writes a column or a respected political newsweekly in mexico. javier cecilia, different from the 40,000 -- sorry, 80,000 fathers and mothers of people who have been executed in this

logic of drug wars, he was confronted with the national media and he immediately spoke out not only against his son's murder and calling for justice but against the entire climate of impunity in the country and he spoke socially and immediately kind of sparked a social movement that is growing in mexico against the drug war and against the violence. one of the early actions they did that was somewhat powerful was the march and april to the statehouse, government house and they had made metal plaques with the names of the seven people who were killed and pulled out of the car on march 27 and 28th late at night of 2011. javier cecilia drilled into the stonewall of the government palace the seven names and they called on other people to bring the names, and make plaques and bring the names of their family members or friends to drill into the government while. and indeed they had 96 names

with plaques drilled into the wall. the reporter wrote about it in his web site and a friend told me about it. he called it a dilemma action because the state was put in this dilemma position. if they leave the plaques up, it an assault against the perception of their legitimacy. this is attacking up unity. the anonymous nature of the death of the simple fact the government didn't investigate anything but it is a dilemma as well because if they take it down it is another active oppression or ruling if the patient and the culture of impunity. what kind of creative actions or dilemma actions might we do here in the united states? i think to get started, one of the first things we can do is learn from our mexican neighbors and start counting. start putting together the list

and creating the consciousness that people are being killed in this country in the logic of a racist and imperial drug war. >> yeah -- the government and the police are involved and i agree with that but the number of people in the lower ranks, the colombian police, they are a lot more than the people involved. so they have a social base and the drug cartels and the drug profiteers have a social base.

that is only possible because there is a population that has no ability to form an organization to confront what he called -- capitalism blah, blah but the reality is they cross over to the united states to -- u.s. workers and that is a reality. unless you change the vision -- you say government is the problem and yeah i agree with that but how you change it -- i have been in the revolution and i am not for legalizing drugs and yes in the united states every day the police are arresting mexicans involved in methamphetamine every day. i know you don't read the paper

but they are there. they have lost amelia and all those who are actually leaving the business in the prisons. so don't tell me that there is no news about it. there is. you just have to look for it. >> well, i actually disagree emphatically with your statement that there is no social organization in mexico. mexico i think is a country of incredibly rich and intense history of deep social organization just. just in recent years from the national liberation to the 80,000 -- 20,000 strong teachers unions section 22 in oaxaca to the rural movements like the police. there is just to name a few for reasons i'm more familiar with egg deep and i print a live political social organization or life in mexico right now.

actually it is more vibrant and more alive than that in the united states and in terms of the news being reported, what i was hoping to contribute here is a questioning of the character of the news that is being reported and there are stories, but the stories and most or a large number of the stories in the united states mainstream media perpetuate i think simple don't help us understand and get a deeper grasp on what is happening and thus being able to really address it and yes i do agree with you that the revolutionary movement is needed. >> deep throat said follow the money and it might have that i was interested in your comment about financial industry being involved and i wonder what information you have about that? and you know like for instance

what institutions are involved and the extent of the involvement, anything you know i would like to know. >> excellent question about the money laundering and following the money. in fact let's see if i get it right. there is a quote from the wire television series that says follow the drugs and you know where it will take you and follow the money you never know where you'll end up. so yeah, but indeed, i think areas whereof the the least amount of work has been done and the most -- a large amount of work needs to be done to really probe the areas of involvement and penetration of the drug industry and the global economy. there have been a few little blips on the map. one recently was a drug deal gone bad. they confiscated an airplane. they traced the sale of the airplane and found out that the money for purchasing an airplane had been moved through wachovia

bank and they gave this little glimpse into how the cash used for major purchases, an airplane, a jet, is moving through the banks. and i think desperately more needs to be done. i myself has done no original research investigation into money laundering or the drug trade and thus cannot speak at any additional level of depth about that. so far what we know are very isolated kind of almost accidents that interestingly enough don't get followed up on. there is another story from the mid-90s where, and if i get this correct, think it is a customs agent in san diego who was inspecting an 18-wheeler coming from tijuana for propane and found several empty false chambers that were filled with tons and tons of powdered cocaine.

went to talk to the driver and the driver was gone. that case ended up getting entirely buried. the propane company is owned by a very powerful political family in juarez. and, now, the customs agent getting -- ended up getting run out of his job and it was the right wing or a better description, rightish newspaper in washington, "washington times" that did a large exposé on this during the clinton administration which is still available on line and you can look it up. that you get these little blips and every time you get a blip the one thing that is consistent is that the monies connected to huge, large financial entities. the major banks, transnational corporations. it is not you know, just the idea of cash getting kind of like snuck back into mexico and backpacks and satchels hunched over the backs of mules.

that doesn't the level of penetration in the global economy and drug trade. >> i am aware of the response in the united states to the world drug council report but i have no idea how it was received in mexico. can you speak to that? >> in mexico there has been a growing expansion of the debate around the issue of legalization and decriminalization and the drug policy report was a national headline for a day basically. of course it was also seen in the mexican media through the participation of very famous mexicans and the commission, carlos fuentes, but it did not have a kind of larger political impact that one might have hoped

to see a political perspective. but one interesting bear about the participation in the report and for those who have might not seem to report the report said the drug war has been an absolute failure. it should be stopped and drug should be decriminalized in state resources should prioritizing public health and harm reduction strategies. he was signing off on a report saying the drug war is a failure as a man who can speak with direct personal authority about failures. during his restoration he created the anti-narcotics elite squad, who later purchased wholesale by the cartel. they were purchased by the men and simply killed en masse about 30 of them and they were the birth of -- the paramilitary group that was created inside the gulf cartel in the gulf

cartel itself was linked to the salinas family and the president of mexico. his brother raul is in jail for a number of years for illicit enrichment, some $180 million they found in a swiss bank account. and, that of course polemic -- pella paramilitary force in the united states had direct connections with a counterinsurgency force in guatemala and carried out training exercise in enough of a door with the united states special forces and receive training from the israeli defense forces. i saw at one point they had taken classes in such tactics like firing assault weapons from high-speed ground vehicles and things they later came to deploy with great success. 15 years later they split off from the culture of the gulf cartel and became what is widely considered mexico's most heinously violent drug trafficking organization.

he also, just another moment of failure, his first-ever drug czar was the general. he is now in federal prison. he is charged with protecting the cartel, the carlo fuentes cartel. when the mexican reporter was gaining access to the maximum-security prison sometimes called lipoma, and interviewed all the super high-level political and major crime figures in the prison, he interviewed the general. the general said no, no, i'm not taking money from the juarez court tell. the opposite, sound money connections from the family, his brother and the cartel. so, i gave a report to the president and the president -- so we get to take our pick. mexican history was either

busting out the president's family for involvement with the drug trade or he was directly involved in the drug trade in this prison. either way it is another kind of little window into the depth of penetration are participation of the state. is not the only time. fast-forward 10 years to 2008 and then chief of the federal national anti-narcotics crime unit was busted for receiving a suitcase with 450 and $50,000 from supposedly sinaloa cartel and at that point they are still together i think and thrown in federal prison. she has got a microphone. >> i was going to ask about the labor unions. they are one of the organized sector sometimes -- how are they reacting? you mentioned the teachers union

and the electricians union strike or lockout. is there any organization around this? >> prior to javier sicilia's sons murder and around the activism, most set heirs of the organized were not in an organized fashion talking about or directing -- directly acting upon the drug war. the national army of liberation started putting out a series of texts. there were these letters between him and a well-known mexican philosopher analyzing the drug war and in previous months but really an organized social grassroots response was not taking place in those are one of the things that have been really positive about sicilia's activism. although now there are a lot of risks of division on the left and stories that want to go into. but, since that, several of of

the unions as well as organizations in the campaign ended up -- and javier sicilia called for a national liberation communiqué supporting that call and they marched, very large marge, some 20 or 30,000 members. but there is movement that it but it is only just starting. >> my question is, guess you are talking obviously about the culture and i have friends who have family who talk about going home and trying to talk to their family members and friends about it and everyone is scared to talk in general come even if their name is not connected to it so i'm kind of wondering your experience as a reporter and with the people you are talking

to and also like your fear in talking about these issues? >> one of the things as a reporter, i was really going to profile in-depth mexican reporters who have to live and work in the zones where they publish as well. those are the people who really faced the most serious risks. people like myself are at the low and i think of the risk of spectrum who come from other countries or in mexico for extended stays and travel back our constantly bombing and in publish in different languages. sometimes it takes a while to translate something, but another level, the mexican reporters based in mexico traveling around the country, anywhere you go it is risky. but then the people who really i think are in danger and their everyday reporting are an active intense courage and struggle are living, reporting and publishing on the same cities.

and yet they are still doing it. there places where it is small. there are so many places where reporters have given up. i interviewed a reporter who won the "national journal"'s up -- price for an investigation of him a military and the station in sinaloa. an excellent reporter an excellent writer who knows how to craft the story, find documents, serious reporter and he told me -- not this was last year from 2010 -- investigative journalism here is debt. all i do now is count -- and yet there are people who, like javier valdez who is constantly pushing that envelope or that order of fear. he knows that he can't say everything it has to constantly constantly -- i constantly have to gauge or literally administer the information that i'm putting

out. indeed javier i asked him, have you ever been threatened and his response was, it is not necessary that they come and tell you. living here every day as a threat and a great sinaloa and reporter in mexico city, alejandra hu in an article about sinaloa has a section called the risk of being alive and the idea is the places where simply being there is itself a danger. and that leads to an issue, the statements use commonly that should be questioned this idea of being in the wrong place at the right time. often time government officials responding to acts of violence will say, there was a case in sinaloa and there was a massacre at a nightclub. 17 people were killed in the next day the chief of security in the state of sinaloa comes out and tells reporters, first off, we are really led in the

recent carnival festival not a single tourist was killed. then he says, we don't have a cop or every little drug dealer who is going to get killed or wants to kill. in spanish it was. [speaking in spanish] and then, a young man asked him, how do you know who it is? and of course they don't investigate anything. the guy said well, by the company they keep so martin said in the 19-year-old woman? he was like well, sometimes unfortunately they are innocent and they're only sin he said is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. so if that is true if that is the government respected than one needs to say okay, you tell the nation that the wrong place in and the wrong time is going to a bar or walking down the