The Pincers of the Mexican Transnational Trafficking Organisations put the squeeze on the EU
The report of the interdiction of 600 kilos of cocaine in Lithuania shipped from Ecuador follows the interdiction in 2015 of 600 kilos in a shipment of coal from Colombia potently indicating the Baltic arm of the pincer which works in conjunction with the Black Sea arm of the pincer. The aim is to flood the eastern wing of the EU with product with a specific strategy to flood Scandinavia already in play with Sweden as the command and control centre.
The grave problem for the state agencies engaged with the MTTOs is the flawed discourse that they pursue and propagate in the public domain on the nature of globalised trafficking by Mexican transnational trafficking organisations (MTTOs). This is the discourse of the “cartels” and its variant of the “cartels at war with each other”. In all societies where illicit trafficking is a state enterprise as is the case with Mexico members of the oligarchy, the politically powerful, the economically advantaged and agents of the state will be involved in illicit trafficking to generate, grow and expand their wealth and to enhance their societal power and influence by giving it traction within the base of the hierarchy of the social order. These traffickers are never included into the defined domain and order of the criminals that constitute the space of illicit trafficking. The reality is that the elites of the society create the discourse that constitutes the criminal illicit order of traffickers as an instrument of social control by which they police the wider society and the illicit, criminal traffickers. This discourse most of all must mask the reality of the hegemony of the oligarchs and the agents of the state over the illicit trafficking order. The North Atlantic discourse of cartel land Mexico is then complicit with this agenda and is duty bound to propagate this discourse even where it’s version of reality is vastly discordant to the reality on the ground. A new dynamic has been unleashed on the ground in Mexico and this dynamic is driven by the globalised hegemony of the MTTOs over the cocaine trade in the North Atlantic and the heroin and meth trade of the US. The fall guys of the illicit trafficking trade have literally been dismantled failing to understand that the quest to dominate the trade in Mexico favoured the unnamed, faceless traffickers with the powers of the state at their fingertips not the named criminals in the public gaze. Whilst they fought over control of the Mexican plazas the conglomerate of traffickers who constitute the Mexican Transnational Trafficking Organisations (MTTOs) secured the supply of the product backwards to its production units, pioneered industrial grade meth and secured the heroin supply, formed globalised affiliations and partnerships with powerful transnational organised crime and gangland necessary to creating well supplied and exploited drug markets the world over especially the EU. The MTTO’s took control of drug markets in the US and EU on the ground at the wholesale and retail levels in a manner never accomplished by Escobar and Lehder before them. The named illicit traffickers whilst fighting over plazas in Mexico missed all of this and it is only in North Atlantic discourse they became international players in drug markets of the US, EU, Australia etc. It is only in North Atlantic discourse that these cartels whilst fighting a war for plazas in Mexico are players in the transnational drug markets. Why then no war for plazas in the EU and the US? You kill each other in Mexico but work together in these markets is the conclusion of the logic of the discourse. Whether those slaughtering the innocents for control of the plazas are employees of cartels, gangs and state agencies the crux of the issue is supply for Mexico is just a transhipment point. Despite the violence from 2006 to the present the trafficking to the US drug markets has not collapsed, prices have not risen on the contrary purity has risen whilst prices have fallen. This market supply reality illustrates that there is an order that has thrived in spite of the violence and this trafficking order is driven by powerful and powered entities other than the “cartels and gangs.” The MTTOs are part of this trafficking oligarchy formed to globalise Mexican trafficking interests and power. The trafficking oligarchy that drives the process is itself the product of the Mexican oligarchy that has globalised itself and expanded its membership vitally necessary to ensuring attaining the success it envisages. This is the oligarchy with its membership intimately intertwined with the power structures of Washington D C and Wall Street, USA.
Under the hegemony of this oligarchy we have seen the discovery of opium poppy farms in the US, coca plants in Honduras, opium poppy farms in Guatemala and fentanyl manufactured in the Dominican Republic. And a tsunami of illicit product unleashed upon the EU in successive waves marching eastwards never seen before in the evolution of drug trafficking to the EU. All instances of cartels at war with each other over plazas in Mexico led by individuals who are in hiding in Mexico and staffed by individuals who are not faceless and anonymous or credible licit members of the social order as the motive force of these trafficking revolutions are then simply deceptive lies. Even when the US state agencies declare the dismantling of a trafficking organisation in Mexico that falsifies their discourse of the “cartel” they continue with the discourse. Potently indicating the underlying reality of manufactured reality via a discourse of truth to mask a driving reality that has to be obscured. This is perfectly illustrated by the press release of August 9, 2017 on the Flores trafficking organisation (TO) in Mexico. This organisation is in the press release described as an independent TO operating in plazas that are under the control of Sinaloa and the Jalisco New Generation organisations. The Flores TO which is in operation for decades according to the press release is not affiliated, not part of one of their “cartels” but powerful enough to operate in plazas with impunity of two dominant “cartels” at war with each other and with Sinaloa at war with itself. The Flores TO is just a glimpse of the terrain of power on the ground of trafficking in Mexico which again falsifies the discourse of truth of cartel land propagated by the US state agencies and its politicians. The strategic agenda of the Jalisco New Generation is also enlightening and is another lesson to be learned.
The EU member states and the EU faced with the tsunami that is already changing the nature of the power relations of the social order for the worse continue to peddle the discourse of truth thereby ensuring that the EU is in for a long rough ride. The marked rise in death due to cocaine poisoning in the UK and France potently illustrates the impact of the strategy of the MTTOs (high purity, lower price and widely available) on EU drug markets but the gravest impact will come from the changes sweeping gangland EU as a direct result of MTTOs action. This gangland recreated in the image and likeness of the MTTOs will enable those intent on waging asymmetrical warfare of all persuasions on the soft targets of the EU. Whilst gangland EU impacts the social order to the point of challenging the hegemony of the state and its monopoly on violence in significant spaces of the social order. It’s a battle that a weak, emaciated and clueless neo liberal state with its gaze fixed on homo economicus is having to punch way out of its weight class.