Puerto Rico becoming a Narco State?

A former head of the Puerto Rico Police Department, Miguel Pereira, said Monday that the U.S. commonwealth has become a "narco state."

Pereira, a one-time federal prosecutor, told reporters that drug trafficking had infiltrated into all sectors of the Caribbean island. Pereira, 64, is running in the 2012 elections on the ticket of the Popular Democratic Party.

The senatorial hopeful emphasized that if he enters the legislature he will promote providing medical treatment for drug addicts as a means for combating trafficking and consumption of narcotics in Puerto Rico, one of the main problems on the island and the cause of hundreds of deaths each year due to violence between rival gangs of dealers.

"Drug trafficking touches all spheres of Puerto Rico. We have the influence of drug trafficking in all our branches of government, at all levels of our society," Pereira said.

Read more on Fox News Latino.

Analysis

First, I'd like correct the aspiring politician. As a member of the PDP, he should know that we can't become a narco state, because we're not a state. Boom! So Let's call it a narco commonwealth. No narco territory, cause that's what gangs rule. Nah, nah.

Seriously? Well I'm glad someone near (in) the government is finally acknowledging what I've been blubbering about all year. Through a combination of the diminishing role of the rule of law, greed, massive consumerism, and little bit of '¡Ay Bendito!' we have the perfect storm for narco-trafficking.

What, I hope, people are starting to realize is that our streets have become the hunting ground for the largest illicitly armed force on the island. Five years ago, you never heard of assassinations involving the public in Puerto Rico. Now it's almost a daily occurrence. This is not going to end well for all of us.

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: Emilio Santacoloma

The Myth of Gang Genocide

While the new superintendent of the Puerto Rico Police Department assures everyone that crime is on the decline, I believe that it exposes the biggest fallacy of drug, guns, and organized crime syndicates. Law enforcement is only one part of a multi-dimensional solution.

Sure we need to find suspects guilty of crimes and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. However, this is like the problem with drugs, if the social conditions they inspire gang-life or drug addiction are not addressed, then law enforcement will never truly eradicate the problem. As most people in Puerto Rico are sharply aware, something is only illegal if you get caught.

While cliche, if we can not remove the incentive for people to pursue a high or the promise of easy riches, we will never see the end to our Puerto Rico murder problem. The true social challenge for Puerto Rican society is to address the root causes of homicide, drug addiction, greed, and apathy. We must accept that the social solution to our problems requires our unified attention and desire to change.

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: James Jordan

Puerto Ricans! We are one! Somos todos unidos.

While there are quite a few blogs in Puerto Rico that will fill you with your local rants and exposes of celebrities, by far the most fair and balanced blog is Gil the Jenius. I often use Gil's blog as a meter to measure just how many Puerto Ricans might feel about the local shenanigans we call home.

As no one else is capable of doing, Gil provides a self recriminating examination of the recent Department of Justice report on the Puerto Rico Police Department. As usual, Gil is not afraid to call the kettle black, and I applaud him for his honesty and sincerity. I think there is only one thing I could possibly add.

We have seen the enemy and he is us

Damas y cabelleros, there is no such thing as the other. We must now and forever acknowledge that there is nothing special about our police, our celebrities, our politicians, or UPR. Before they were any of those things, they were just Puerto Ricans. Before they were PPR, PPD, PNP, PRPD, or UPR they were our sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. By becaming PRPD the didn't just happen to become the rights-violating, head cracking, pepper-spraying Puerto Rico Police, they were JUST LIKE everyone else. Because we are just like them, just on a smaller scale.

It's common sport to stand around talking over our morning coffee and we typically complain about how terrible the Police are (or UPR, or politicians, ...). We point to them and say: "This is outrageous." We say: "Their behavior is unacceptable." We say "Who do they think they are? They can't do that! That's an abuse of their powers."

All of those things would be true, except, we must also accept one other truth. There is nothing special about these people. Before they became responsible for our problems, they were part of the crowd pointing the fingers at [the police, the politicians, the organized crime syndicates, the parties, yadda, yadda, yadda].

Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and Quantum Physics

One of the nearly universal truths in prehistoric and modern society is the recognition that we are all connected. We are all part of a collective intelligence that is mankind. Yes, we may pray in different ways, and worship a different deity, but upon close inspection, each religion considers it's flock to be one. Further, even science suggests that we are connected. Whether through quantum physics or string theory, our understanding of the infinite falls short and we must rely upon our faith. In almost every instance, one of the beliefs we usually accept is that we are one.

Yet, in contradiction that belief, we still almost universally believe that someone else is responsible for our problems. We see politicians regularly arrested and convicted of extortion, and a variety of other crimes (taking pictures of your naked ass in the mirror?). We say: "Those frigging politicians, they're all corrupt." We'd be right, under our current system of purchased representation, they are corrupt. But so are we, the number of human rights violations the common Puerto Rican commits daily approaches anarchy. (Yes, I do believe that leaving YOUR shopping cart behind someone ELSE's car is a human rights violation!)

Our kids are dying because we refuse to unite

The most dangerous variation of this disconnect, is the organized and unorganized crime raging through our poorest communities. Ladies and gentlemen, since Operation Bootstrap and the implementation of lucrative entitlement programs, Puerto Rico has ALWAYS had a high crime rate.

In the United States, the authorities classify assassinations our your own tribe differently than all other crimes, especially if the tribe is one of the many minorities. But, in particular, they are VERY concerned, if you're killing your own in a place that has something THEY want. Isn't that why we went into Iraq and Libya?

Throughout man's history, tribal warfare has been the root of nearly all of our conflicts. But, what makes a tribe start killing off it's own members? Depending on your stance behind evolution, this begins to look more like genocide than anything else.

Puerto Rico has had a average murder rate for the last 30 years of around 600 or 700 (I'll get the numbers, just can't remember where I got them). That makes it like 180,000 to 210,000 people dead so far. It may not seem like it, but we've lost more Puerto Ricans at the hands of other Puerto Ricans, then anything else in our history. Well besides the Spanish, and that whole slavery and disease fueled genocide back in the 1500s.

So, really, a sudden jump like we're experiencing right now isn't that big of a variance. Yet, at the core of this tragic situation, we've always believed that the Puerto Ricans that are killing each other, is okay, because they are killing EACH OTHER (read, the poor) off. They were persona non grata (not a person). Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

What was once only the occasional collateral damage of our ongoing genocide, has seeped into the general population and is now a common occurrence. This is bad. This is a very bad trend, which I hope will serve as a tipping point for Puerto Rico.

I'd like nothing more than for Walter Andrés Quiles Rodríguez y Wilfredo Sevilla Alsina to become the martyrs that we need. Is two promising young Puerto Ricans enough for us to admit that we should have protected them? Can we finally admit that we are wrong? There is no other, it's just us. Can we please admit that everyone living here in Puerto Rico is connected? If we can't recognize that we're killing our future, then there truly is no saving Puerto Rico. Let us all pray that we can unite ourselves, before it is too late. Let us unite ourselves in the preservation of ourselves from our worst enemy, ourselves!

Creative Commons Flickr Contributor: Paul Lowry

Implications of Puerto Rico being a popular drug smuggling origin

I don't know how many times I've read it before, but it's always tacked on to any news article about the most recent massacre or crime in general in Puerto Rico. As the news of the latest tragedy hit the Associated Press, there it was again:

An estimated 30 percent of drugs reaching the U.S. come through the Caribbean, with Puerto Rico a popular transshipment point because drugs do not have to clear customs to reach the mainland.

However, when I read it this time, a light bulb flickered on inside my head. If the purported root cause of the violence, crime, and mayhem in Puerto Rico was directly linked to Puerto Rico's popularity as a transhipment point for drugs, then why don't we change Puerto Rico's classification? Why don't the travel and shipping authorities change Puerto Rico to become an International destination and origin?

That way, all of the travelers going between Puerto Rico and the United States would be forced to comply with the rules and procedures of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In addition, all cargo shipments from Puerto Rico to the United States would also face the same scrutiny as those from Mexico, Columbia, or Turkey.

Pros and Cons

Of course, this means placing a significant burden upon the millions of travelers that leave our ports and airports. For any business travelers, this would be a steep price to pay. However, I think it may be the only chance we have, besides decriminalizing cocaine and marijuana in Puerto Rico, to increase the safety of our citizens. Although, after looking at the data, I bet that if Puerto Rico would decriminalize drugs, we STILL wouldn't see any significant reduction in the crime rate.

In the past, I think that it has been easy to miss the larger point that dawned on me when I read about the massacre in Toa Baja. While we have the perfect storm conditions for a large drug trafficking trade in to Puerto Rico (high welfare, large cash economy, corruption, and high supply of drugs), it pales in comparison to the profit generated from controlling the major drug trafficking which flows through Puerto Rico.

In my opinion, the high number of murders and violence in Puerto Rico are not caused by the mere trafficking of drugs into the island, but the trafficking of drugs through the island.

Then you also have to consider, if Puerto Rico is a popular place to smuggle drugs into the United States, then what else is being smuggled into the US? Maybe guns, maybe even weapons of mass destruction. Of course, that is unthinkable, but it is difficult to deny the logic.

Conclusion

Sometimes the simplest solution to a problem is right in front of our noses. Sometimes it just takes being hit over the head with that solution one more time before the gears and tumblers fall into place to reveal the answer to our problems. I'm sure that's what happened here. I'm so confident about this, I can feel it in my bones.

Just to check my conclusion, I've compiled a spreadsheet comparing population to homicide rate. Per person, Puerto Rico exceeds all other states in homicides. For the data I was able to quickly compile, in 2005, Puerto Rico had twice as many murders per person than the highest of any other state, in this case Louisiana.

Puerto Rico is probably just like any other densely populated state. The number of drug users has to be relatively the same. So why the huge spike in murders? There can be only one answer. While there may be millions available to people willing to sell drugs within Puerto Rico, there HAS TO BE hundreds of millions available to whoever controls the shipment of drugs TO the US.

I'm so convinced that I'm right, I'm going to initiate a campaign to communicate with all of the authorities that might be able to take action on this information. My challenge is to figure out who to contact, and how to get this information into their hands. Wish me luck, the future of crime reduction on the island may depend on my success. Hmm, who knew, MC Don Dees would become a crime fighter?

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: oddsock