With a record 85 billion dollars in reserves, a 400 million dollars aid from the Merida Initiative is really useless; the problem is not money, the problem is the police and judicial systems are heavily infiltrated. The Army can only detain drug dealers in fraganti -red handed-, and are not allowed- by the constitution- to investigate or follow up, hence the ones detained are later freed by the corrupted system.

To say that the Cartels out gun the Mexican Army is an exaggeration; it is truth that they have an impressive arsenal for a civilian criminal organization, including grenades, diverse assault rifles, 50mm Barret guns and even maybe Rocket Propelled Grenades -which if they have they have not used yet-, but the Army can handle this, they have done it so far. Every fight or battle, either on the streets or the sierras or mountains of Mexico, invariably ends up with the drug dealers running or dead.

As for the allegations that the Cartels “frequently steal from the Mexican Army stockpiles”, it’s completely false and lacks any support. The Mexican Army has a limited arsenal and is very closely guarded; the weapons used by the Cartels do not come from there. They don’t come from the gun shops in the border either; the weapons used by the Cartels come from the US Army stockpiles and/or directly from the manufacturers like Armalite, Colt and Bushmaster to name a few.

Why is the US backing Mexican Cartels?
Here is why: there are 30 to 40 million consumers of drugs in the USA that demand their daily fix. Billions or drug dollars move freely and are laundered every year in the USA with the complacency of US Government and the public. The American public has been indoctrinated into believing that drug cartels come only from the south; but what about the American cartels that distribute and have the lion’s share of the drug business? Why does the DEA only arrest low level street distributors? – Mexico with very limited resources and a corrupted judicial system arrests many more cartel heads than the US-, Where are all the big fish? Apparently drugs distribute themselves in the USA.

You can have all the international cooperation and support that you want, but the fundamental problem remains: as long as the American society keeps focused on money instead of family, more and more consumers will join the market, demand will increase and the drug business will thrive.