Everyone in this thread is blaming their favorite "pet issue" on the violence. It's hilarious. I think it's because we need QE3.
Intimidation, the authorities can't find the drug lords and their henchmen without help and tips from the general public. Brutally murder civilians and make anyone who wants to help fight the drug gangs think twice about going to the police. Mexico is ****ed. For whatever reasons, Mexicans just don't respect the rule of law and without that theres no way they're going to defeat the drug gangs by conventions means. I haven't really heard this discussed anywhere, but one of my Mexican friends says that a huge problem in the drug war is the "machismo" mentality that is pervasive in the poorer areas of the country, it just swells the ranks of the drug lords. His dad brought him over to the US so he wouldn't grow up in that environment.
Mexico has been very poor for a long time. It didn't get poorer because of NAFTA. I would guess it's actually less poor after NAFTA.
You know you can have a country's GDP increase while simultaneosly have more percentage of people falling into the "lower class" category in that same country.
Yeah, Carlos slim from Mexico is the richest guy in the world. Prior to the Revolution Egypt has massive poverty but its number of billinaires and mutlmillionaires was growing.
It's totally clear: Several Mexicans read the D&D -> they think that one poster claims all evil in the world is caused by extremist Islam, especially beheadings -> they think the poster is a dumbass -> they want to prove him wrong -> they go and behead people. It's actually my fault . That's the self-deprecating version of glynch's theory...about as likely as your version, glynch .
I crazy a part of me says invade mexico ,and take it over, send in ground troops... their army and police is pointless anyway. It would be a true cakewalk without even a shot fired. make their labor force organized, and use that cheap labor to compete with china over the next century. We could stop the violence, and set the country straight while tapping into the cheap labor force. yeah I know 'sovereign country'.. yada yada it didnt seem to matter when bush was in office so the gloves are off and we are imperialists taking over the world anyway. screw it ,that's who we are.. Mexico looks enticing ... I would love to go to acapulco and know all the annoying street vendors are gone and are now making $3 an hour at US govt set up factories in better conditions than before, and the streets of acapulco are safe. no more guys trying to sell me temporary tattoos at the beach.. no more banana boats , or horseback rides... and no more weapons grade cocaine. oh well... gotta have some tradeoffs I suppose.
i dont know about mexico, but the united states is definitely worse off after NAFTA. the idea that the current wave of violence is due to the free market is about as ridiculous as claiming that jimmy carter was the last president with a military background. the violence has always been there, but it only got out of hand when the zetas broke away from the gulf cartel. this is a war over control of smuggling routes and the gloves are off - the zetas are u.s. trained special forces - imagine a bunch of rambos running around working for the drug gangs and that is what you have - they are trained to terrorize, kill and generally f*** stuff up and they are very effective at it. this violence wont subside until the zetas are put down/killed off or a truce is reached b/t the cartels.
the two things that would begin to curtain the violence are legalization of drugs and allowing mexican citizens to own firearms.
This. I'm glad to hear that Mexican police are siding with cartels. It isn't right that the state can murder, steal, and coerce people into cooperating with our drug war. Hopefully they'll have a revolution and install a government that doesn't cooperate with the U.S. on this ridiculous war on drugs. The war on drugs is a war on the citizens of this country. If they don't decriminalize drugs, the same thing will happen here with our police defecting to serve the gangs distributing drugs.
No stats from mexico to back it up but if it can happen in United States, it can definitely happen in Mexico. http://www.econ.umn.edu/~tkehoe/U.S.GDP.gif http://newsjunkiepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/USgini1913-present.jpg
I just read that there were more than 1,400 murders in Mexico in the month of April 2011. That is simply insane.
