3 : transborder crime and governance by George Grayson

A body sprawled in an alley in a run-down area in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is an all too familiar crime scene. In recent years, drug vio- lence and the economic recession in the city have reshaped the city’s character and demographics. (KATIE ORLINSKY/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX)

n August 24, 2010, Mexican Navy personnel found mala border, which is as porous as a sieve blasted by buck- a jumble of decaying, blindfolded and bound corps- shot. Their goal was to use Mexico as a pathway to the U.S. es slumped against a wall in a remote farm in San “We have firmly asked the Mexican authorities to conduct OFernando, , 90 miles from Brownsville, Texas. an exhaustive investigation to find those responsible for this The 58 men and 14 women, who had endured savage tor- abominable event,” harrumphed Hugo Martínez, foreign ture before being killed, marked the largest mass slaying to minister of El Salvador, where officials found a suspected that date in Mexico’s version of the “.” The Zeta training facility and $14.5 million in drug monies bur- discovery followed a shootout between —an arm of ied in plastic barrels. In the aftermath of this unspeakable the Mexican Navy—and —a bloodthirsty, sadistic disaster, Mexican President Felipe Calderón accepted the cartel founded by deserters from Mexico’s Special Forces. Initially focusing on drug transactions, Los Zetas have GEORGE GRAYSON teaches Government at the College of branched into murder for hire, kidnapping, extortion, con- William & Mary. He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and an associate schol- traband, human trafficking and a score of other criminal ex- ar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He has written ploits. The desperados had sought to recruit as foot soldiers The Executioner’s Men: Inside Los Zetas (with Sam Lo- and extract money from the San Fernando victims, most of gan) (Transaction, 2012) and Mexico: Narco-Violence and whom were Central Americans who had furtively crossed a Failed State? (Transaction, 2010). He holds a Ph.D. from the mountainous, jungle-covered 600-mile Mexico-Guate- Johns Hopkins University and a JD from William & Mary.

33