(MSNBC) MEXICO CITY – Red Cross clinics in some parts of Mexico are refusing to treat people wounded by gunshots after finding themselves caught in the drug war, with cartel hit men intercepting ambulances to seize patients and even killing a Red Cross worker this week.
Miguel Angel Valdez, director of operations for the Red Cross in the Gulf coast city of Tampico, said he implemented the policy after gunmen this week forced an ambulance over at gunpoint just two blocks from a Red Cross clinic and dragged off a man wounded in a gun battle.
In drug-plagued Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast, police started escorting ambulances and guarding Red Cross clinics after a Red Cross dispatcher was killed Sunday in crossfire by assailants who followed a wounded man to a clinic to finish him off.
Culiacan’s Red Cross clinics closed for two days following Rogers’ death. And in the violent city of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, doctors and other personnel at two government-run clinics stayed off the job Tuesday to protest gunmen barging into emergency rooms to either rescue wounded comrades or execute rivals.
Gangs have also targeted doctors for extortion.
Amid the drug violence that has killed more than 17,900 people in Mexico in a little more than three years, even the criminals seemed to respect the Red Cross, an organization known for treating everyone — regardless of gang allegiance, criminal or social status, said Valdez, the Red Cross director in Tampico.
“But suddenly, these rules are being broken,” he added.
Well, this must be just more signs of success, according to President Obama’s DEA Administrator nominee Michele Leonhart.
It is only a matter of time before the Rio Grande no longer contains the Mexican Drug War in Mexico. According to Homeland Security, these Mexican drug gangs are now controlling drug traffic in 230 American cities. What makes this possible is the 60%-70% of their profits that come from marijuana sales and a prohibition policy in America that ensures those profits.
Mexican drug gangs would not become Boy Scouts following American re-legalization of cannabis. However, they would become violent criminals with a much smaller budget, unable to buy off judges and police and military and unable to afford as many weapons and as much ammo. Yes, organized crime still exists in America 77 years after the repeal of alcohol prohibition, but the mafias of today aren’t massacring each other in public over their bootlegging turf.
