Four Corners: May 18
On Monday, a BBC report exposes guns, drug cartels and secrets on the Mexican border.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Programming
Monday’s Four Corners screens a BBC film Secrets of Mexico’s Drug War – how a covert operation named “Fast and Furious” saw thousands of guns sold to a drug cartel fuelling the violent conflict along Mexico’s drug-smuggling routes to America.
The arrest of Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘el Chapo’ Guzman in February 2014 was hailed as a victory in America’s war on drugs, but the truth behind the capture could be just another murky chapter in the scandal-ridden history of US involvement in Latin America and the Mexican drug wars.
This investigation from the BBC looks into the American authorities’ relationship with the biggest and most powerful criminal organisation in the world, the Sinaloa Cartel, a multi-billion dollar international corporation with franchises in 58 countries. Despite its leader’s arrest, the cartel is still enjoying extraordinary success, and this program examines allegations that the group has been given an easy ride in return for informing on other cartels.
High-level informants, immunity deals, government-sanctioned gun trafficking and a mysterious go-between charged with carrying messages between the DEA and the cartel: a picture emerges of a dirty war being fought for control of Mexico’s drug-smuggling routes to America, with little regard for the thousands of victims of the violent conflict.
Monday 18th May at 8.30pm ABC.
One Response
That infamous FN Five-Seven again. If another gun was used, or that gun couldn’t be linked to the ATF, there would have been no scandal, Republicans in congress wouldn’t have been able to dredge it up before an election to damage the Democratic administration. But the Sinaloa Cartel would still be doing business and murdering people just the same.
Sensational conspiracy theories based on absence of facts are always easier to find than the truth. Politicians play politics with issues to try and win elections, the Sinaloa Cartel could have bought another of the millions of other illegal guns circulating in the US and Mexico, powerful multinational crime syndicates don’t just go away when you arrest one person (especially when his previous arrest, before escaping from a Mexican gaol, had no effect) and immunity if routinely offered in the US to fight organised crime to people from…