Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s repairmen
It blows my mind that there are multiple organizations that are so large and well armed that even the Mexican government won&#x27;t touch them.  Keep in mind that the Mexican military has the 17th most active duty personnel <i>in the world</i> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_countries_by_number_of...</a>) and spent $7 billion last year (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mexican_Armed_Forces" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mexican_Armed_Forces</a>), and still isn&#x27;t willing to take on drug cartels stomping on their own sovereign territory.<p>These guys just throw up repeaters and not only do they not try to hide them, they actually mark them to show who is going to be destroying your life if you take them down.  Oh, and you have to pay if you want to work on your own legitimate equipment that is rightfully on that tower.<p>The illegal drug trade exists on a scale unimaginable to most people.  Imagine if we could figure out how to legitimize it- we&#x27;d save countless lives over stupid stuff like having your life threatened just because you work for a telecom company and need to do your job.  If we could tax drug money at just a couple percent we could invest in all sorts of social programs and infrastructure, rather than funding thugs.  The crazy part is that a lot of the drug lords don&#x27;t even spend a good chunk of their fortune, they just store massive amounts of money in houses they&#x27;ll never even live in.<p>Edit: To clarify my point a little, the reason the Mexican government isn&#x27;t willing to do anything is that they couldn&#x27;t do anything about it even if they tried.  The Mexican military has fewer people than the cartels and have a smaller budget.  According to this article from 2012 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;muse.jhu.edu&#x2F;article&#x2F;485071" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;muse.jhu.edu&#x2F;article&#x2F;485071</a>) the Mexican cartels employ 450,000 people and make $25 billion annually (these numbers have probably increased in the last eight years).  The Mexican military would have to be incredibly skilled to take them on with 177,000 people and a $7 billion budget.  And even then, that&#x27;s just the Mexican cartels, there are more in South America and the rest of the world.  Stopping the illegal drug trade would take a unified policy effort from every government in the world, we&#x27;re past the point of being able to be able to fight the cartels with military power.