Monterrey: The Uncertain Future of Mexico's City of Wealth

In recent decades the city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico has arguably been Mexico’s most prosperous city, with the country’s best standard of living. To this day it boasts an average income three times greater than the national average. http://www.economist.com/node/17249102?story_id+17249102 As recently as 2006, the business community lauded Monterrey as Mexico’s city of promise, with a highly educated population, spectacular new commercial buildings, and low crime rates. http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1800-monterrey-north-star-shines

Four years later, in a tragic turn of events, Monterrey appears a different city. While the contemporary office buildings remain and business caries on, Monterrey has become the site of narcotics-related violence of epidemic proportions. Here it follows the trends in many of the border cities of northern Mexico, most notably Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo). Most violence results from a war between two drug organizations, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. In addition to mounting violence, rates of use and sales of narcotics within Monterrey have greatly increased. If these trends continue, Monterrey may well be faced with an economic decline.

Fighting between the Zetas and Gulf Cartel in Monterrey is an extremely recent phenomena dating to February 2010. The Zetas were originally members of the Mexican Army’s special forces groups, the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), the Grupo Anfibio de Fuerzas Especiales (GANFE), and the Brigada de Fusileros Paracadistas (BFP), which were originally designed to counter the Zapatista insurgency in Chiapas. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Zetas. Al Jazeera contends that the United States 7^th Special Forces unit trained the GAFE in Ft. Bragg North Carolina in the early 1990s.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/10/20101019212440609775.html

By the late 1990s, the Gulf Cartel’s leader, Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, encouraged that GAFE soldiers defect to his organization, pursuing and murdering ofmembers of rival cartels. Guillen’s most senior recruit was Arturo Guzmán Decena, who brought along 30 other GAFE troops, forming the initial core of the Zetas. Allegedly they were attracted by far greater payment than the Mexican military had provided. The Zetas soon acquired new responsibilities within the Gulf Cartel: “collecting debts, securing cocaine supply and trafficking routes known as plazas (zones) and executing its foes, often with grotesque savagery.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_zetas In early 2010, however, the Zetas broke away from the Gulf Cartel and are now fighting against it in northeastern Mexico, including Monterrey.

Monterrey, capital of Nuevo Leon, contains 3.7 million of the roughly 4.2 million inhabitants of the state. Monterrey is located near the center of the Google Earth image posted above. The light green shows its urban and suburban area—or an area of great human impact on the land. The rest of the state ofNuevo Leon is sparsely populated and one finds little evidence of human impact on the land. http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1800-monterrey-north-star-shines One also sees little human impact in the section of Tamaulipas depicted at the right of this map.

The settlement pattern of the state of Nuevo Leon supports the operating capabilities of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. The Mexico City-based political news magazine Proceso found that the northern reaches of the state, with its vast ranches, sparse inhabitance, and arid plains, has become a “sanctuary” for both groups. Proceso claimed that an undisclosed state government entity admitted that in this vast territory the cartels operate without detection. The same source further stated that cartels are difficult enough to track when they use roads and federal highways, and impossible to locate when they move into the hinterlands devoid of government authority. The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel established training camps in the unpopulated area between Monterrey and the border cities of Tamaulipas: Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo (all three cities have become battlegrounds).

http://proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/79488

Proceso also reports that the uninhabited region surrounding Monterrey is used for burying the remains of victims of the drug-related confrontations. As of August of 2010, Mexico’s armed forces had uncovered seven mass graves in Nuevo Leon and one in Coahuila; in four of these gravesites there were more than eighty bodies. In other sites the armed forces reported that they encountered bones so decayed that they could not determine the identity of the victims. http://www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/82015

In seeking a solution to drug-related violence in Mexico, many pundits look to the United States. In a November 2010 lecture at Stanford University, an unnamed expert from an NGO in Mexico City asserted that American and Mexican efforts to combat drug cartels by use of force are misguided, as more resources are used in fighting drug cartels than are required in efforts to curb demand for drugs through prevention and rehabilitation programs. The speaker therefore encouraged the United States to emphasize reducing the market for drugs within its own population. She also urged the U.S. to stem the flow of arms from markets in the United States to cartels in Mexico.

Unmentioned by the speaker was the fact the market for drugs within Monterrey has grown astronomically in recent years—just as the market for narcotics in Mexico on the whole has increased. A September 26, 2010 article in Mexico City’s La Jornada found that narcotics were originally only sold in certain neighborhoods of the city, but now can be bought almost everywhere. The Zetas dominate the drug market of Monterrey, selling out of tienditas (small stores) which have cover businesses as such as tortilla stores, fruit stores, corner stores, discos and bars. La Jornada believes that with the exception of the police, all of Monterrey’s inhabitants know which of these businesses are actually drug operations. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/09/26/index.php?section=politica&article=007n1pol

With the rise of drug consumption in Monterrey it is clear that stemming the demand for narcotics in the United States would not eliminate drug-related violence in Mexico. Rather, the prevention of drug use, and the rehabilitation of addicts must be pursued. Some pundits even advocate the legalization of drugs in order to remove them from the black market and subject them to taxation and regulation. For now, prevention and rehabilitation are more realistic options, as legalization seems a distant prospect.

In any event, the raging violence in Monterrey’s streets must come under control if the city is to continue to be an economic powerhouse. Reducing the use of drugs in the city would likely prove an effective first step towards pacification. As wealthy inhabitants of Monterrey flee the violence—many crossing the border to the United States—others condemn them for cowardice and for abandoning Monterrey’s economic miracle. One can only hope that drugs and drug-related violence will not ruin Monterrey.