The Mex Files

Since I expect the Mexican Army will be dispatched to Louisiana in the next few days (after Hurricane Katrina, they went by truck… and showed up a lot sooner than FEMA, but so did just about everyone and everything), I thought I might say something about the annoying tendency in all U.S. news reports to claim “los Zetas” are all former military people, or — laughably — “special forces troops who went over to the dark side.”

Mexico doesn’t have a very large Army (about the same number of soldiers as Chile, a country of 16.5 million  … and Mexico’s soldiers also perform a lot of non-military roles — disaster relief, forestry services and medical care in disadvantaged communities among others).  However, it does have national service, and being an “ex-soldier” is no particular distinction. And a lot of what are probably called “ex-soldiers” are kids who put in their time in the Servicio Militar (sort of a junior home guard that usually plants trees and does some calethenics) or were among the large number of guys who just quit the service, with or without official permission.  In other words, not exactly professional, disciplined military careerists.

I don’t know how the story started that the Zetas were rogue Special Forces guys in the first place.  Mexico’s entire Army Special Forces is only about a hundred guys — about the same number of troopers in the Papal Swiss Guard.   That’s a weird comparison, I know, but even the Swiss Guards — who have the probably the strictest personnel vettings on the planet — every once in a while have a rogue member (they had a barracks murder a few years ago).  It’s within the realm of possibility that a special forces guy joined the gangsters , but given this photo which was in several Mexican papers today, not likely that there’s more than one, or two of what would be very scary gangsters.

Here are some particularly nasty “zetas” — self-confessed as such — presumably responsible for chopping off a dozen guys’ heads down in the Yucatan.  Stripping them down to their skivvies for their mug shots is usually to show that they haven’t been beaten (at least not so you can see it)… but these are not any “special forces” veterans… unless they’ve really gone to seed.

I’ll have more to say on this later, but the myth of a “criminal force” makes them harder to control… and more likely to lead to real abuses than if they are seen for what they are.  Stripped down, they’re just thugs… and out of shape thugs at that.