Is Mexico ISIS farm league? Or maybe the other way around?

[Gerald_II]

@Colibri

However, most of the murders of the cartels are clandestine. They attempted to cover up this particular mass killing, as well as the other the killings revealed by the other mass graves in the area. And the cartels are killing people who act against their interests, while ISIS may do that, they kill people simply for belonging to a different religion, or even a different sect, than they do.

There maybe some overlap all kind of other terroristic groups like the FARC, Shining Path, etc, as well but the Mexican cartels and ISIS differ so much in ideology, objectives, and history that linking them doesn’t really make sense.

Maybe, but FARC and Shining Path are far less familiar to Americans, than other criminal organizations like the various mafias, prison gangs, street gangs, and racist organizations in the US.

So while ISIS has a different ideology, history, and objective than that of Los Zetas, Sinaloa Cartel, CDG, etc they are more similar and comparable than other, more familiar criminal organizations.

La Cosa Nostra, the Russian Mafia, and the Yakuza, to my knowledge, don’t regularly record their murders for the purpose of distributing them to the public. Nor have I come across large scale mass murder committed by those groups in recent times.

The Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, Nuestra Familia and Black Guerilla Family are mostly behind prison bars, and usually when they make the news it’s for drug dealing, or killing of their own members.

California, Chicago and NY street gangs make videos but usually it’s just trash talking or at worst, filmed fights or beatings. Never murders on tape, or large scale mass murder, or the taking of entire towns and cities, although neighborhoods have been taken over.

The Ku Klux Klan is very vocal but seem to be reduced to a particular message board and the occasional news story about racist marches or speeches, and once in a great while a hate crime directly attributed to an white supremacist organization.

Some of the drug cartels methods seem to be more in common with ISIS than that of other North American criminal organizations.

[Gerald_II]

@Great_Antibob

So did the Romans.

Somehow I doubt few people consider either ISIS or the cartels to be the spiritual successors to those guys.

There really isn’t that much of a connection here, except “here’s two groups of people I don’t like who happen to not be very nice to other human beings”. And that’s a weak connection.

I think it’s because ISIS and the drug cartels both exist at the same time, and are making headlines simultaneously, whereas the Roman Empire was performing public executions/murder and committing large scale mass murder centuries and centuries ago.

You’re making it a weak connection by reducing both to “two groups of people I don’t like who happen to not be very nice to other human beings.”

As others have pointed out there might be comparisons, but those comparisons are less familiar to the general public.

[Gerald_II]

@Crazyhorse

This incident has gained so much traction in Mexico and maybe around the world because the Mexican population has reached a tipping point. It symbolizes what they have been enduring for years and is not really any more horrific than many other incidents, nor does it reveal any higher level of corruption of local governments than has been revealed countless times before. It has become a rallying point, triggering mass demonstrations and demands for change so it is making a lot more news than other similar incidents in the past.

Hopefully it will incite change. Unfortunately, like in the US, you have a segment of the population who glamorize and idolize the criminal culture, in particular the cartel life. I’ve seen an influx in drug cartel type shows where the protagonist is the drug dealer. Then you have musicians further romanticizing it.

@Crazyhorse

But when someone in the US asks “Seriously what the fuck Mexico??” while over 10% of the US population is directly funding the problem, and drugs are easily available in virtually every small town and one-room schoolhouse across the entire USA, indicating a large degree of corruption on the part of the US to facilitate that multi-billion dollar marketplace for the cartels, it is fair to point out the hypocrisy of all that the question implies.

Good point. Drug use, drug dealing, and gang life is promoted and glorified here that nobody with any real influence takes the time to examine the effects this has on a neighboring country like Mexico, and take measures to change things.

Some of my family are actually upset that Chapo got arrested. They rationalize this kind of response because supposedly the cartels give many people jobs and money and “they only kill other drug dealers” but then something like this happens and their shocked. Because people that torture and dismember their rivals couldn’t possibly have been capable of murdering innocent people.

[DinoR]

@Cubsfan

You guys that don’t see close parallels between the terror tactics used by ISIS and what’s been going down in Mexico for the last two decades…

The IED / counter-IED fight during the US involvement in Iraq was parallel by the same dynamic in Northern Ireland earlier. It doesn’t mean the IRA and Al-Qaeda In Iraq were strongly linked just because they used the same insurgent tactics to try and deny freedom of movement. On the other hand US-UK clearly have a strong link. Correlation of tactics does not prove the relationship implied in the first post.

Go ahead and read the article linked to up thread. Or get someone to read it to you.

Mexican drug cartels are worse than ISIL | Al Jazeera America

[/quote]

If you’ve started with the point of why is the world more concerned about ISIS than what’s happening in Mexico this thread might have gone differently. Even after the fact it’s hard to see that point being implied in the initial post. Getting insulting when you finally get around to making this point… :smack:

@Crazyhorse

Mexican cartels have been mass-murdering people since way before ISIS was a thing. And as can be deduced by anyone with the most basic reasoning and cognition, they aren’t in any way related. So what parallel were you trying to draw?

Minor quibble with the bolded part. Many such groups are superficially related by operating in the same black market networks for illegal goods and illicit services which support their individual aims. Sometimes that produces strange bedfellows even when the aims are completely unrelated. I still agree with your basic point that even if there was such a relation it doesn’t support the implied parallels of personnel systems and goals.

[Cubsfan]

Beheading, torturing, raping innocents and putting it all on display on social media, bragging and smiling about it, piling bodies and heads in town to keep people in line is a DIRECT parallel between ISIS and the ongoing Mexican clusterfuck. You’re a fucking idiot if you can’t see that.

Has nothing whatsoever to do with their ideologies or ultimate goals. The brutality is identical. To a T. Doesn’t matter to me if this has happened for 100 years by 100 groups either. That’s irrelevant. The comparison is no less correct.

Keep pointing out how Mexico isn’t like ISIS because they believe this or that blah blah blah… Don’t care. Wasn’t what my OP was about so enjoy that conversation amongst yourselves.

[Gerald_II]

Cubsfan,

what do you think are some solutions, either for us in the US or for those in Mexico, that would help in weakening the power of the drug cartels?

I agree with you that ISIS and the cartels seem pretty similar with their methods. However, I think that so many people become desensitized to the violence and corruption due to the way it’s treated. For example, George Zimmerman shot a 17-year old and it was all over the news sparking debates on racism in the US. But in southern California you have Mexican gang members targeting and murdering blacks, and putting “NK” (nigger killer) graffiti on walls to intimidate Blacks, and yet that doesn’t garner national attention. At least none that I’ve come across. But people in the area get used to it, get used to the presence of gangs, and even rationalize it.

[Emiliana]

Given that close to 100,000 people have been disappeared and presumably killed in Mexico since 2006, it is surprising how much attention this particular crime is getting.

Even thought the students came from peasant families, they were still students, and can’t be written off as criminals as so many of the victims have been. And I suspect there’s a fair amount of resonance with the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre when the military killed somewhere between 30-300 students. That was a major historical turning point and the beginning of the end of the PRI’s hegemony in a one-party state.

[DingoelGringo]

@Spice_Weasel

Jesus Christ.

You are supposing He was involved?

[Crazyhorse]

@Cubsfan

Beheading, torturing, raping innocents and putting it all on display on social media, bragging and smiling about it, piling bodies and heads in town to keep people in line is a DIRECT parallel between ISIS and the ongoing Mexican clusterfuck. You’re a fucking idiot if you can’t see that.

Has nothing whatsoever to do with their ideologies or ultimate goals. The brutality is identical. To a T. Doesn’t matter to me if this has happened for 100 years by 100 groups either. That’s irrelevant. The comparison is no less correct.

Keep pointing out how Mexico isn’t like ISIS because they believe this or that blah blah blah… Don’t care. Wasn’t what my OP was about so enjoy that conversation amongst yourselves.

One of the only things both groups do have in common is that they are operating at a time when smartphones and social networking are available to facilitate rapid dissemination of their activities.

So, yeah, they are as closely related as any two groups who have killed people and distributed information about it to others in order to further their agenda.

And yes, both groups have brutal tactics. Is that it? Is that the similarity you are trying to communicate? I guess I would have just thought you’d have to be a fucking idiot not to realize any two groups that use violence are similar in some respect and that you were trying to indicate some meaningful or relevant comparison. My mistake.

[Rick_Kitchen]

The Mexican federal Attorney General was being bombarded with questions about this issue, and about 45 minutes into the press conference, he turned to an aide and said “Enough, I’m tired” (“Ya me canse”). That’s become a rallying cry and a meme. #YaMeCanse is trending on Twitter and a lot of people are saying, “I’m tired of the lack of action”, “I’m tired of the corruption”, “I’m tired of the lack of the federal government.”

[Stringbean]

Is it not fair enough to say both ISIS and the Mexican drug cartels are employing inhumane tactics against innocent civilians?

I think, though masquerading behind poor wording, the point of the OP was to highlight our shrill abhorrence at ISIS across the globe, but subdued apathy toward a group doing similarly evil things just across the border.

[Rick_Kitchen]

Apparently protestors set the National Palace on fire last night.

[septimus]

I was unaware of the scale of violence in Mexico; the only recent “news” about the Mexican cartels I’ve had was watching Breaking Bad. :smack: My excuse is that I’m busy taking care of family, “smelling the flowers” and keeping my intellect busy with things unrelated to current events. I use my TV only to watch movies. My main news source is SDMB itself!

Still I do watch occasionally watch U.S. news or read magazines, and recall little mention of these problems. I have no solution to offer for Mexico’s corruption, but a first step would be more attention from U.S. news media.

I thank OP for bringing the matter to our attention. It’s too bad many Dopers had to focus instead on the poorly-phrased thread title.

[Count_Blucher]

@Crazyhorse

One of the only things both groups do have in common is that they are operating at a time when smartphones and social networking are available to facilitate rapid dissemination of their activities.

aka- they can both GPS / Flash Mob armed troops to specific locations at specific times, and all of the car loads can quickly exit afterwards to preset locations / alibis. Pretty sure gangs do that here now too.

It’s arguably less important to ISIS as there really isn’t much/any Law & Order follow up to their actions.

Just restating to make sure I’m clear on the subject & reading with interest.

[Drunky_Smurf]

@Der_Trihs

What makes you think that ISIS has anything to do with Mexico, of all places? Is this some Mexican version of the “Obama must be a secret Muslim because he’s black” theory? “Mexicans are brown, ISIS is brown, therefore they must both all be Muslim fanatics”?

You’re a retarded fucktard.

[The_Second_Stone]

Cubs fans are stupid. Here, read the article I’m linking to in this thread: CUBS SUCK! -the official site of cubs-hating-

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[DrDeth]

What was the motive for the massacre?

[Colibri]

@DrDeth

What was the motive for the massacre?

The mayor of the town was afraid that a student protest was going to disrupt a speech his wife was giving in the plaza, so he wanted the police to make an example of them.

The students were activists from a left-wing college with a history of protests. They were apparently in town to solicit donations, and were trying to “borrow” some buses to go to a demonstration. (Student protesters hijacking buses in this manner is evidently fairly routine; the buses are returned afterward.) The police were ordered to open fire and six people were killed on the spot. The remaining 43 students were taken into custody, but instead of charging them the police turned them over to the mobsters they were in cahoots with and they were executed. Not to excuse the students for the attempt to take the buses, but that’s not the kind of crime that warrants summary execution without a trial.

[The_Second_Stone]

@Colibri

Not to excuse the students for the attempt to take the buses, but that’s not the kind of crime that warrants summary execution without a trial.

Apparently you are mistaken.

And is the OP accusing the mayor of being ISIS, the mobsters or the students?

[DrDeth]

@The_Second_Stone

And is the OP accusing the mayor of being ISIS, the mobsters or the students?

No one. He is accusing none of those with being ISIS. :rolleyes: