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The Geopoliticalmonitor’s Christ Ljungquist examines how Mexico’s recent elections will impact the country’s bloody and long-running war on the cartels. . Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Mexican Elections, Terrorism, and the PRI: Cartel War in Flux? Chris Ljungquist - Sep 03, 12 Geopoliticalmonitor.com On Friday August 24th, an American diplomatic vehicle carrying two U.S. embassy staffers and a Mexican Navy captain was ambushed on a remote road outside of Cuernavaca, close to Mexico City. After the SUV veered off the road, three more vehicles blocked its escape route, and all four opened fire on the embassy car, wounding the two Americans on board. If anonymous “narco blogs” and other reports are to be believed, an informant with access to the Beltran Leyva cartel- perhaps with information on the whereabouts of “El H” (Hector Beltran Leyva), one of Mexico’s most sought after drug lords-may have been on board with the U.S. agents. Mexican authorities detained 12 of the “federales” that fired upon the diplomatic vehicle, and an investigation has been launched to shed light on the incident. If anonymous sources are telling the truth, then the attack could very well have been an attempted targeted assassination of the informant and the U.S. embassy staffers. The various cartels’ intelligence networks of informants- called “halcones” (hawks), who serve as “lookouts” within government agencies and rival cartels- could have alerted the relevant players in the unending cat and mouse game played south of the U.S. border. Mexico is currently in a state of political transition. The Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), the old guard of Mexico’s political elite that ruled the country for over 70 years, is set to inaugurate their first president since Vicente Fox’s election in 2001, prompting U.S. policymakers to seriously consider the possibility of a strategic shift in Mexico’s war against the drug cartels. This war, which has left a death toll of close to 50,000, is not merely a national issue, and its importance transcends the sovereign frontiers of Mexico’s borders. It has vast and far-reaching national and international implications, with a hemispheric theater of operations. The case is analytically complicated by the fact that while the Mexican government is officially at war with the cartels and targets certain cartels more than others, the cartels are at war with each other, often playing the government against their rivals, producing a very interesting sub-state balance of power dynamic. Whilst we are still not certain as to the real motive in the abovementioned attack, the incident does illustrate salient points about Mexico’s war against the narco-traffickers. The conflict offers us a fascinating case study on the evolution of sub-state criminal organizations from highly organized transporters and “exporters” of consumer products (drugs, in this case), to politically astute actors with sophisticated intelligence apparatuses funded by a multi-billion dollar trade in illegal narcotics- perhaps 20 percent of total U.S.-Mexico trade.   Read the full article at:  http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/mexican-elections-terrorism-and-the-pri-cartel-war-in-flux-4722/  follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2012 Geopoliticalmonitor.com, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website.  Our mailing address is:  Geopoliticalmonitor.com 5700-100 King Street West Toronto, On M5X1C7 Canada