The Tohono O’odham suffer from a typical tribal woe, poverty, which leaves them vulnerable to Mexican drug gangs. The nation, which includes 75 miles of boundary with Mexico, is well positioned to smuggle drugs from that country to the drug-consuming cities of Arizona and the rest of the United States. The jurisdictional interplay between the tribal authority and the U.S. federal government creates a virtual lacuna of enforcement against tribal members smuggling drugs on the reservation.
Tribal elders fret about the loss of tradition and culture to the criminal ways offered by the drug cartels. Smugglers can offer a year’s earnings for someone to drive a car full of drugs, usually marijuana, across the border from Mexico onto the Tohono O’odham reservation. From there they can either drive it on up to a city or store it for pick up by a different courier.
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In addition to pollution of tribal culture, Tohono O’odham leaders worry about the loss of sovereignty of the nation, which is compromised by the illegal activities. They are wise to be concerned about loss of sovereignty. Even Mexico itself has the same concerns as cartels increasingly buy off government officials.
The de facto government in many parts of Mexico is one or more of the cartels. Mexico’s tradition of official corruption is exploited by the drug cartels who offer fabulous amounts of money to officials who do their bidding. They offer immediate death to those who don’t. The proposition is known as oro o plomo, gold or lead. It is a very effective proposition.
But the Tohono O’odham are disillusioned with the cartels, too. There are few opportunities to move up in the cartels. The people of the Tohono O’odham are used typically as mules to transport the contraband but they rarely are afforded the opportunity to achieve advancement to management positions in the organization.
Most Tohono O’odham families know or have a family member who is earning money working for the cartels. No one wants to turn in family.
Federal prosecutors in Tucson are reluctant to prosecute cases in which there is no confession because they anticipate little chance of conviction. Tribal members drive each other’s cars so they can claim they know nothing about any drugs found in the car. That is enough to put off prosecution.
As a practical matter, there is no effective law against this on the reservation.
Speaking of loss of culture, one particularly vicious method of exploiting the tribe is for smugglers to become sexually involved with tribal women, impregnating them. As father of tribal children, they cannot be expelled from the community. They are then well positioned to operate their smuggling business.
It is not only the Tohono O’odham whose culture and sovereignty are being compromised by these criminals. The same complaint can be made by Mexico and even the United States.
Every time I look at the drug smuggling business, I despair that it is so lucrative the smugglers can buy off almost anybody. They are leading young people, both in the Tohono O’odham Nation and off, into lives of crime and disrespect for the law.
No amount of border enforcement can seem to stanch the flow. There are big – I mean BIG – bucks to be made sending contraband into the U.S., sneering at our efforts to maintain our borders.
The only way to get a grip on this situation is to change the incentives. People are exquisitely sensitive to incentives and follow them predictably.
We need to face facts. Marijuana prohibition has been a flop. Anybody who wants it can buy it. It has been as successful as liquor prohibition was in the 1920s. And it should meet the same fate.
The end of liquor prohibition in 1933 offers one model for handling the crime surrounding the distribution of the drug in this country. When repeal was finalized, most of the smugglers just hung out signs over their doors and went about their business legally - under control, without the need for machine guns.
That would be the effect we would hope for. The liquor gangs 90 years ago were just as vicious as the drug gangs are today. But nothing ended the violence until the incentives were rationalized.
Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.newflashpoint.com.
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