James Petras:Imperialism-Bankers, Drug Wars and Genocide

In May 2011, Mexican investigators uncovered another mass clandestine grave with dozens of mutilated corpses, bringing the total number of victims to 40,000 killed since 2006, when the Calderon regime announced its "war on drug traffickers". Backed by advisers, agents and arms, the White House has been the principal promoter of a war that has totally decimated Mexico's society and economy. If Washington has been the driving force for the regime's war, Wall Street banks have been the main instruments ensuring the profits of the drug cartels. Every major US bank has been deeply involved in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug profits for the better part of the past decade. Mexico's descent into this inferno has been engineered by the leading US financial and political institutions, each supporting one side or the other in the bloody "total war" which spares no one, no place, and no moment in time. While the Pentagon arms the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Agency enforces the "military solution", the biggest US banks receive, launder and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the drug lords' accounts, who then buy modern arms, pay private armies of assassins and corrupt untold numbers of political and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.