Obama's role in Mexico’s drug war

last updated 8 January 2015

What happened

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday said that U.S. agents this week arrested 755 people suspected of working with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel. The latest arrests were in California, Maryland, and Minnesota. Agents also seized $59 million, 13 tons of cocaine, and 8 tons of marijuana in a 21-month operation. Mexican cartels’ distribution networks now reach 230 U.S. cities. (The New York Times)

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The U.S. has pressing crises to deal with in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Russia, said David Rieff in the Houston Chronicle, but the “far closer to home” crisis in Mexico could be just as dangerous—and it isn’t getting near the “attention that its gravity requires.” The Mexican drug cartels, locked in an increasingly bloody power struggle, are trying to “tame and suborn the Mexican state,” with some success.

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