Meanwhile, the journalist in the article had just published about their extortion racket.
I've lived in Mexico for a long time and I'm about to book a ticket across the country to visit a friend in Playa del Carmen soon. It's just not something that affects me. I'm more worried about getting maimed by a car hopping a curb in the scheme of life, and I still walk with my back to cars.
Reminds me of the sad story of the teacher who was just traveling through mid-northern Mexico a year or two ago and went to a bar and started asking the wrong kind of questions. Cartel caught wind of it and killed him, likely because they thought he was DEA
Murder and crime have been growing fast in Quintana Roo since the new state government started in late 2016 or so.
I lived there in 2017-2018. Cancun now has a murder rate above the national average. There are shootings weekly, even in the zona hotelera. A couple of months ago someone threw a grenade into a bar. It’s getting ugly.
Many people are smart enough not to be swayed by fear based news. You’re 100x more likely to die in a car accident on your commute tomorrow than by a cartel member in Mexico as a tourist.
Mexico, Colombia and Brazil are the most dangerous countries for being a human rights activist or journalist. Meanwhile global corporate media mostly focuses on Venezuela...
Well of course - governments are expected to be better than organized crime or at least stable.
Not to mention the entropic importance of the story being proportionate to the unexpectedness. Snowing in Moscow in the winter isn't news. Snowing in Florida summer is.
Mexican here, I agree it's becoming (if not already) a failed state. Only thing holding it together is that not everyone is a pos and that big capitals do like pretending to have a rule of law.
Not so. Those who actually go across the border from Brownsville to Matamoros see it; those who fly straight to Cancun do not. It used to be a pleasant trip (through the mid- to late nineties) to go for a day or two, at a reasonable price. Good food, and a great place to buy quality vanilla. Not safe any more; sad. I suppose it makes sense that border towns got hit the hardest, but it's sad for people who enjoyed going across for short trips by car rather than going to expensive resort towns.
The sad thing is they are quite obviously a narco state but nobody wants to call it. Same with Venezuela. Just waiting for Forbes magazine to do an article on Narco billionaires for the DEA to swoop in... Thats the Narcos (Netflix) meme right... If Forbes exposes you they shut you down.
Funny isn't it? Mexico is a narco state because of American and European drug habits. Instead of tackling drug use the DEA is fighting cartels in Middle and South America. Cartels that are equipped with America made guns.
Tough to say what counts as large, but there are lots of articles like this one about avocado growing towns hiring their own militia because the federal government simply isn't relevant in the area:
What is a "swath"? What is "just cartels?" Are cartels providing road and highway construction? Are cartels operating the national healthcare service? Do they do water permitting? Collect taxes? Regulate commerce? Look at my passport when I enter the country? No - none of the above. Your claim is false. They influence parts of the government, not substitute it. You are describing a place more like soithern Somalia.
>Are cartels operating the national healthcare service? Do they do water permitting? Collect taxes? Regulate commerce? Look at my passport when I enter the country?
Considering that they have politicians and legislators in their pocket, yes.
The state, the drug traffickers, and the paramilitaries have been the same for a long time, with support from the US. Where traffickers have control, the state's working as intended.
You say that as though it's a defined, well proven fact that has wide agreement. The link you refer to properly points out that it's not at all widely agreed upon. Rather, it's a theory by one guy, derived from his reading of fiction that he decided to flip around, and then float in his recent book. He used a universal way to get maximum attention: be controversial.
Unfortunately the only way to kill the cartels is to legalize drugs and force them into legal industries that we can regulate. That won't stop cartels completely, but it would take away tremendous revenue sources. That being said, I believe I've read that cartels have diversified so much that they now make more money from avocados and other sources than drugs.
Cartels do not only sell drugs, they are systems of diversified private security corporations and paramilitary groups which have emerged out of the previous iterations of violence and loss of governmental order which was a symptom of national narcotrafficking disputes in the previous decade. Basically a large portion of the Mexican Government effectively is infiltrated by cartels which also function with public support, hence the mudering of journalists and politicians...cant have people speak out and show that cartels are bad now can we?
If you had a time machine and could boycott drugs in the 1980s then it would have had an impact...now not as much.
It's very easy for people to convince themselves that they are not contributing to the problem. "It's the government's fault for not liberalizing and regulating the drug trade"
Isn't that really where the blame lies? The idea that addicts are going to prioritize an abstract contribution to some far away problem over maintaining their supply, especially when treatment and legal access is very hard to come by, is highly unrealistic.
When the drug war ends and murder rates in the Americas don’t go down to European levels, maybe some will realize it was never the drugs to begin with: https://mexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/murder-rate.jpg (murder rate in Mexico is far below what it was before the drug war started, and has trended down as the drug war ramped up after 1980).
As a non native living in Mexico I'm not surprised by this but on the same hand I would say its actually not as bad as people think here, you see the cartels don't want tourists to stop coming as the locals wouldn't like it and it would effect the cartels bottom line, as long as you stay out their way the cartels will usually leave you alone, just as gangs in Chicago will most of the time.
Mexico is a beautiful place of warm people, brave journalists and contradictions.
How would they know? Your local "guy" is just some guy. And even if he weren't, what are you going to do, ask? "Excuse me, are you part of a cartel that murders people?" "Uh...no?"
I think the situation is bad enough now that you should boycott your local "guy" even though it's possible that all his drugs come from humane, sustainable sources.
There are a lot of recreational cocaine users, and they are doing it right under our (or their) noses. They range from billionaires to your local college grad.
See The Social Network Movie, Wolf of Wall Street, etc. The drug use was not as dramatized as you might think.
The set people who care deeply enough about this issue to change their drug consumption habits is probably pretty small. And of the ones that are so motivated by this issue, I assume they're infrequent users that account for a small fraction of the cartels' profit.
If you are purchasing illegal drugs (except something someone could grow in their basement i.e. marijuana) - then you are funding some sort of organised crime
I hate to agree with Trump at all, but the drug trade is largely due to ineffective border controls. An impervious border may well restore relative peace to war torn northern Mexico.
The vast majority of smuggled drugs come in through border checkpoints, hidden in shipments of ordinary goods that are part of the legitimate US/Mexico trade.
The drug trade is due to consumer demand for drugs. The violence is due to government prohibition driving it underground. Underground markets tend to elevate the worst, most ruthless and violent actors. Legalizing and regulating recreational drugs will likely put violent drug cartels out of business or force them into legal, nonviolent traditional roles.
The problem there is "impervious border". It's impossible.
And even with a perfect wall in place, we still let people through it and over it and around it via other channels. The problem isn't really just people physically walking across the border away from checkpoints.
I insist that my local trap car only vend organic, ethically- and locally-sourced fair trade heroine. And an extra dollar from every purchase goes to the Ronald McDonald House.
As a thought experiment, how would violence in Mexico be affected if the Western Hemisphere (Argentina to Alaska) were a Schengen Area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area).
That is, true freedom of movement: no passport controls, no border controls, and all "illegal" immigrants in the US from Central/South America now immune to deportation.
I'd expect the import of drugs would double or quadruple, but perhaps that is something we in the US could live with in return for implementing a charitable, just, and historically accomodative Schengen-like policy?
Readit News
Meanwhile, the journalist in the article had just published about their extortion racket.
I've lived in Mexico for a long time and I'm about to book a ticket across the country to visit a friend in Playa del Carmen soon. It's just not something that affects me. I'm more worried about getting maimed by a car hopping a curb in the scheme of life, and I still walk with my back to cars.
I lived there in 2017-2018. Cancun now has a murder rate above the national average. There are shootings weekly, even in the zona hotelera. A couple of months ago someone threw a grenade into a bar. It’s getting ugly.
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That doesn't mean Mexico is as bad a place to live as Venezuela.
[1] - https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2019
Not to mention the entropic importance of the story being proportionate to the unexpectedness. Snowing in Moscow in the winter isn't news. Snowing in Florida summer is.
Mexico has terrible problems but it is far from a failed state.
Considering that they have politicians and legislators in their pocket, yes.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/oswaldo-zavala-interview-m...
bad policy isn't the same as support
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Now, those are something scary. I wouldn't dare to go to school in the US with how insecure they are. How can people study in those places?
Dead Comment
Pushing for US government to legalize and regulate these drugs is probably the most effective action.
If you had a time machine and could boycott drugs in the 1980s then it would have had an impact...now not as much.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/p...
When prohibition 2.0 ends in failure maybe some will learn that it doesn’t work.
Mexico is a beautiful place of warm people, brave journalists and contradictions.
That’s progress!
Dead Comment
See The Social Network Movie, Wolf of Wall Street, etc. The drug use was not as dramatized as you might think.
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https://crimethinc.com/books/no-wall-they-can-build
There will always be a way to get it into the country if there is a paying market.
And even with a perfect wall in place, we still let people through it and over it and around it via other channels. The problem isn't really just people physically walking across the border away from checkpoints.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That is, true freedom of movement: no passport controls, no border controls, and all "illegal" immigrants in the US from Central/South America now immune to deportation.
I'd expect the import of drugs would double or quadruple, but perhaps that is something we in the US could live with in return for implementing a charitable, just, and historically accomodative Schengen-like policy?
There's people arriving without jobs. So with no money, how do you think they will survive?