Drug Trade Tyranny on the Border

This contrasts with yesterdays piece on how successful border monitoring was pushing people towards the Pacific. Looks more like the iron grip of the drug cartels and their oversight of all illicit cross-border traffic might be just as important. This Washington Post article paints a picture of private armies in a firefight with police and military. Of course the organisations interpenetrate each other, cops demanding pay-offs and trafficking themselves, military up to all sorts of stuff, but occasionally disarming cops. Citizen security sounds as though it comes very low on the list of priorities. But in the cocaine trade, money comes first.
There is a suggestion that part of the problem originates with the decline of the Arellano Felix cartel. Tighter border security post 9/11 has led to the development of a local market too. Lots of figures in the piece, but as usual a shifting focus in what is quite a long article.