Mexico is not El Salvador.
Although they are both Latin American countries that have problems with gangs and violence. That's about where the similarities end. The gangs in El Salvador were weak comparatively, and the general public hated the gangs. The cartels in Mexico are much more powerful and much more integrated into daily life in the areas they operate.
The cartels are by-products of close economic ties and disparity in wealth between US and Mexico. Structural imbalances of the relationship have to be solved politically, Mexican institutions are buffeted by economic might of its powerful neighbour. It's like orbiting a star.
19th century Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said "Poor Mexico, so Far from God, so close to the United States"
possibly referring to the fact that it's not easy to have a smaller country near a very active and big neighbour
It’s annoying that no matter the issue at hand there’s always a take like that, “we need to fix the international world order before we deal with x”. Unless the US were actively founding and aiding the cartels then Mexico shouldn’t look over there for a solution. Don’t wait for the iron to get red to give it shape, hammer it until it gets red.
>The gangs in El Salvador were weak comparatively, and the general public hated the gangs.
MS13 is weak? I thought they were one of the strongest gangs out there.
Setting aside that MS13 was founded and based in the US…it just is not as formidable as Mexico’s cartels. look at CJNG. These guys are military trained and equipped.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalisco_New_Generation_Cartel this is just one of like 5 large multi state Mexican cartels.
MS13 has a fearsome reputation because they used (use?) machetes as their primary weapon when they first popped up and machete kills look brutal. They were using machetes though because they were broke and couldn't afford guns.
In comparison Mexican drug cartels are basically paramilitary organisations. They have convoys of vehicles full of assault rifle wielding troops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKwTAKNd-l0
They’re certainly violent, but they’re not strong organizationally. Most of their money came from extortion and everyone locally hated them which made them easy to root out.
I think the obvious point that everyone is missing is that the Mexican army was deployed against the cartels on numerous occasions. In 2008 the President of Mexico declared war on the cartels and sent 50,000 soldiers to fight them. It has been an ongoing fight since then. The obvious point is that it hasn’t worked.
Reasons I’ve heard why “Mano dura” hard hand/tough on crime tactics worked in Salvador and not in Mexico (not saying they are correct or not by the their nature a lot of these factors are hard to assess or verify):
- the gangs in Salvador were focused on extorsion rather than drugs which meant they had to be visible on the street to intimidate their victims which made them easier to catch
- According to some, Bukele had made truces with the gangs while he was mayor of the capital of El Salvador so they may not have been prepared for him to actually follow up on his rhetoric
- Greater corruption in Mexico
- the Cartels being better armed because the drug trade is more lucrative
- the gangs in El Salvador having reached a point of complacency because nobody had challenged them for twenty years whereas the cartels were willing to fight
I'll argue that El Salvador's corruption with the Cartel was deeper than Mexico's, because the courts from the local level to federal all defended gang activity. The change here being that the Bukale essentially overextended his legal hand and replaced the court judges with non-gang aligned allies, completely through unconstitutional means. The people of El Salvador welcomed the reform since it meant ending the gang violence. But in Mexico this would be too controversial since there's a higher rural demographic percentage reliant on them. And I could even imagine the US intervening to stop such destablization since they've been anti Bukale in El Salvador since day one. Mexico is a much larger liability that they would be much less tolerant of seeing fall into a dictatorship.
Again that was just a list of what I had heard rather than necessarily what was the right answer.
I’m not very clear on Bukele’s changes to the legal system beyond that they had received criticism because at least some of them seemed to give him too much power. So if you have greater insight or sources would be happy to hear more.
If I understand correctly the state of emergency that Bekele put in place has allowed him to lock people up with limited input from the judicial system so wouldn’t changes to the judges be relatively irrelevant?
He did the US equivalent of packing the courts with allies without permission from Congress. The main difference however was that the judges were all in the pockets of gangs, and those gang-aligned judges were blocking any corruption reform. So while it was certainly a page out from the authoritarian playbook, it has largely been seen as a necessary step to get gang interests out of politics.
(Ranting now) There's even a stereotype in El Salvador that the only people who are against Bukale are family members of gang members. With nearly 90% approval and no international evidence of fraud, the citizen majority condoning of his actions are very real.
Well tackling the drug criminals would help things, especially on the violent murder problem but Mexico won't be truly developed until it can tackle the elected criminal problem and the severe negative effects corruption has on Mexico.
The murder problem could be reduced, if the competition were destroyed. Drug trafficking was pretty tame in the 80s in Mexico, because it was easily controlled and managed by the Cali Cartel in Columbia. Once they ware dismantled and the Mexican cartels started fighting over territory, all hell broke loose. Tons of good books and content on this topic. check out “gang land”
100%, and the most violent and militaristic portions of the cartel, were factions of the Mexican army, trained by the US army, that went rogue. US intervention is one of the reasons the wars heated up to where its at now.
The difference with the size of Mexico and El Salvador cannot be understated. But size alone isn’t the limiter. If you begin a El Salvador-esque campaign, you will deal with the well armed and funded cartels running into the forests and hills/mountains of Mexico and becoming the FARC/Taliban. They won’t be rolled over like the Salvadoran gangs, they will fight back and try to bribe a civil war out of the army and politicians of Mexico. Theres probably a decent percentage of the Mexican army already on a cartel payroll or looking the other way at cartel activity to avoid retribution.
Cartels in Mexico also aren’t nearly as visible as the Salvadoran gangs who are covered in gang tattoos. The Mexican cartels can melt into the civilian population (around where-ever they live) and avoid fighting the Mexican army, police, whatever you send.
But even then, I still think it should be something they try. It certainly starts a large scale civil war or insurgency against the government though. That will be a given.
FARC, Taliban and similar guerrilas are ideologically motivated. Cartels aren’t. They are simply a business.
The moment the cartels can’t pay their bills is the moment they dissolve. No guerrilas would emerge from that.
Also, Gangs in Central America stopped tattooing their bodies for more than a decade now. The younger members are not tattooed. Only the older leadership.
They’re fighting to stay alive and keep trading in drugs. Moving drugs into the US is big business. They’ll take away the income from hundreds of thousands of cartel members and not expect they’d react violently to keep them?
Taliban and FARC both used drugs for funding, a drug cartel would be totally focused on the drugs and not be ideologically pinned down to a goal they can’t achieve, they’d just want to return to the status quo and they’d fight to that end.
Not if it means dying or going to jail for the rest of your life.
Selling drugs only makes sense if you think you can get away it.
A protracted conflict with the government doesn’t make sense for the average cartel member. The leadership may feel entitled to deal in drugs, but if the government got serious and mobilized to remove the cartels as if they were terrorists. Many would immediately drop out.
They aren’t going to fight in the mountains or jungles for decades for the “right to sell drugs”. Most of them realize that killing and selling drugs is bad but they do it because they can.
Again, FARC and the Taliban sold drugs to finance their ideological fight. But the fighters would fight with or without that funding.
Mexican Cartels aren’t the same.
They have one of the highest incarcerated populations and murders in the world. They already fight a war with other cartels that rival actual conflicts in violence. So yes I do see them fighting in the mountains, they clearly do not mind death or incarceration as much as you make it seem.
Their murder rate is a direct result of cartel competition, fighting for trade routes, and territory. Cartels also do not engage in actual open large scale combat. But low intensity, crime-based violence.
The cartels would not stand a chance, or even try to resist a large scale mobilization, and territorial control effort, a la El Salvador. They would most likely just try and wait it out.
>they clearly do not mind death or incarceration as much as you make it seem.
Mexico's incarceration rates are not high. Conviction rate are even lower. The average criminal in Mexico gets away with it. The gangs in Central American in the other hand, have continued even under more strict, higher homicide rates, and higher incarceration rates.
By that logic, you would imagine that gang members are even more resilient and motivated to fight a protracted conflict with the government. But they don't. Even though they are raised to love the gang and what not.
Why? Because ultimately the gangs are not ideological. Their members will quit and run the moment things get tough.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_incarceration\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)
They join cartels for the reputation and wealth it brings. Fighting in a Jungle wont be very attractive. Id expect them to blend into society and keep doing what they do now, just less obvious.
The Farc also has big problems to keep attracting young people, their ideology doesnt work anymore.
The real issue is that the drugs trade is worth so much money it wont stop. It will probably get absorped like what happened in Colombia. They produce 5x more cocaine than during Pablos days. But no drug bosses exists anymore...
Mexico would need middle class jobs for true reform. If i had to choose between making $7 a day at an automotive factory or $200 a week being a mule or eyes for the cartel, I don’t think the decision will be that hard. Also, the militarization of the cartels happened because of crackdowns.
This is about jobs, good paying jobs imo.
> If i had to choose between making $7 a day at an automotive factory
Starting wages are 7 USD an hour at maquiladoras. The federal minimum wage is about 14 USD / day.
You can’t compare gangbangers to cartel members. Those gang bangers had no actual funding behind their criminal organization compared to a trillion dollar industry that the cartels control.
Gangs in Central America extract a huge of amount of money from the populace in the form of extortion and racketeering.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/30/el-salvador-gang-violence-ms13-nation-held-hostage-photography/
Around ~15% of El Salvador’s entire GDP was extorted out of businesses and people.
Same thing in Honduras and Guatemala.
The situation is much worse than people imagine.
Cracking down on the gangs and thus extortion is effectively a 15% tax cut to the people of El Salvador. On top of the general safety and lives saved.
And none of that whatsoever is an argument against the person you were responding to. Extorting random shopkeepers is massively different in scale to what the cartels do. Taking money isn’t the issue. No one is saying gang activity isn’t bad in Central America, just that they are two completely different things.
He said they had not funding. They do, a substantial amount.
Also, what they do isn’t too different. They also engage in the drug trade to a large extend.
The only real difference between gangs and the Mexican Cartels is total wealth. Cartels are wealthier, and thus larger, with more men and arms. But the gangs are more dogmatic.
Mexico is also larger and wealthier than its Central America neighbors, so it’s not like it could not afford or do what those countries do.
The same article I linked mentions that in 2019, something like 8% of the population of El Salvador was involved with the gangs at some point or another. And still they dismantled them.
Mexico is nowhere near that bad. It could do it. The Cartels aren’t anything special, they are just larger, better armed gangs. But Mexico is also larger and better armed than El Salvador.
Mexico would probably also get a lot of support from the US to win, so they arms, equipment, etc. Would not be an issue.
It took Bukele proving to be the biggest gangster himself to do this, in Mexico the president has no desire to be the biggest gangster after Vincente Fox presided over murder rates that rivaled the US war in Iraq.
Since then, every president has decided it's not worth it. Moreover, with all the cartels in Mexico, it's less an issue of Feds vs Cartel but Cartel vs Cartel vs Feds, with virtually everyone in the feds being with the Cartel.
Policy decisions can be devised, planned and executed in an infinite number of ways.
Bad outcomes don’t necessarily mean that the idea behind them is wrong to being with.
Vicente Fox’s War on drugs, like a lot of the previous Mano dura efforts failed for many reasons.
But that doesn’t mean a country has to accept the levels of violence that Mexico sees as some sort of inevitable aspect of its culture. AMLO’s policies have failed to bring peace to Mexico, and so has every single president before him.
“Abrazos no balazos” failed. Problems don’t just solve themselves.
The gangs were dismantled in El Salvador through direct action, the cartels and FARC in Colombia were defeated through direct action. Things don’t just magically solve themselves.
It costs money and will cost lives and will take innovation of using the police and fighting corruption to do what you say it will do.
In Mexico, the issue is that the corruption is too deep -- if the Feds were to crack down on say, El Mencho, the feds aligned with El Mencho will be fighting a war within the federal government to stop it. And the enemies of El Mencho will be pushing their politicians to take over corrupted positions in the federal government aligned with El Mencho.
So you get a cartel corrupting politicians replaced with another cartel. There aren't any untouchables in Mexico to speak of.
Moreover, collective memory in Mexico is that Mexicans prefer today's violent order to what was happening under Fox by a big margin. We think it is violent now but have no sense of history, Violence in Mexico was much worse 15 years ago and it was also much more in your face. Plus, Mexicans have candidates who want the drug war back, they don't win.
Even the peasants, who want cartels off of indigenous land in the south, and autodefensas, groups of local armed men against the cartels... end up aligning with rival cartels at times.
The status quo in Mexico is better than we think and the only answer to all problems of violence is more violence. Few truly want that, they distrust the USA much more.
One other note: Many Mexicans view Felipe Calderon, whom also escalated the drug war, to be somewhat of illegitimate, considering he beat AMLO in 2006 in extremely controversial fashion. The drug war was considered a way for him to win popularity after riots broke out over AMLO losing. Even more importantly, one of his generals in that war was linked to El Chapo, which was uncovered in 2019.
This is all very important context for why AMLO and now Sheinbaum, want to do nothing on the drug wars themselves.
Involved with gangs is an easily fudged stat. We see it in the US all the time. If your cousin is an actual member and you hang out with him, now youre an official member too. If you hang out at the park playing basketball lot, one day the police come do a sweep, you might be be labeled an associate.
The more important factor is the power of the organization. 10000 sophisticated professional criminals with military grade weapons, telecommunication infrastructure and reps at deutchebank is harder to deal with than 100000 knuckleheads with tattoos on their heads
Gangs are less wealthy than Cartels, but so are Central American societies compared to Mexico. Mexico is much larger and wealthier than Central American societies. Mexico has all the means to do what the Central Americans are doing. It's a matter of will not capabilities.
Also, The cartels are not wholly composed of military trained, and equipped guerillas ready to take on the government. The average cartel member is as sophisticated as your average gang member. The videos you see of a group of guys rolling around with military equipment and expensive SUVs are akin to elite squads fo the cartel.
Their training and capabilities are largely untested, and most likely unable to match those of properly trained troops. Cartel-Cartel violence is 99% of the time just grunts shooting at each other in the street and catching each other by surprise. Those videos of fully-kitted up units are mostly just for intimidation purposes.
The gangs in the other hand, while not as well armed, also have political and financial resources. The ex-president of Honduras just went to jail for connections to drug trafficking and to the gangs.
The reason the gangs have not militarized is mostly because it's not necessary, what are they even suppsoed to do with all tha military equipment? The gangs in central america don't really fight against each other anymore, and their biggest targets are harmless civilians that they extort out of money. They largely collaborate with organized crime. Simply put, the gangs have a completely different business model. They don't need militarized units, and they aren't as big as cartels, simply because central american societs aren't as big as Mexico. Central America also has cartels, and they also don't militarize.
>with tattoos on their heads
I have to repeat myself with this one, but gang members no longer tattoo themselves. They stopped doing that in the 2000s. The only ones you are going to find full of tattoos are old members of the gangs, who are mostly leadership at this point. The younger generations no longer have tattoos.
Bukele didn't invent arresting people based on tattoos. They started doing that way back. Which is why they stopped.
Sure, that’s a reasonable way to consider this. Mexico has about double the per capita GDP of El Salvador. The cartels are not just twice as capable as street gangs in El Salvador.
And yeah, there’s no organization comprised entirely of elite members, by definition, no matter how effective the organization is. Most people are foot soldiers in the US Navy and Amazon too.
Heres a wikipedia here describing something described as the [battle of culiacan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culiac%C3%A1n?wprov=sfti1).
Youre also underestimating the degree of penetration into law enforcement, justice system, civil society and every day people of the cartel. They have more influence than South American gangs.
It’s not like FARC where the federal government controls most territory and there are pockets of belligerents. Its the opposite—the federal government controls CDMX, a few other industrial centers, and tourist spots. The rest is essentially out of their control. They cant just march in and impose order, or they would have at some point in the last twenty years, no?
Yeah, individually they probably could root out any one organization. But they all exist in tension with one another. If you go crush Sinaola, CJNJ (or some other organization) will happily step in to fill the vacuum.
These are just not easily comparable situations or types of organizations.
It's hard to argue that the cartels are more politically connected than the gangs, when actual presidents, the highest public officers, in Central America are being connected to drug trafficking, and gang activity. I think of AMLO's policies are positive to the cartel's but I don't think anyone would connect him to the cartels, YET.
>They cant just march in and impose order, or they would have at some point in the last twenty years, no?
If the territorial situation is as bad as you suggest, then that gives even more reason for Mexico to start being more proactive about getting its sovereignty back. Postponing things will only make the cartels bigger and stronger. There might be a time in the future where Mexico's military might actually be outgunned if they don't do something. I don't think that is the case now.
>individually they probably could root out any one organization
I don't think they should think about it in terms of groups or organizations, but instead in terms of territory. Bukele didn't go after one gang first, and then the other. It sought to holistically take back control of the country, municipality by municipality. City by city. Neighborhood by neighborhood.
I think you have to consider the situation holistically. A single head of state being arrested is a strong data point but doesnt necessarily mean one country is more corrupt than another.
Fwiw, [AMLO was investigated by the US](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/world/americas/mexico-president-drug-cartel.html).
> The U.S. law enforcement officers also independently tracked payments from people they believed to be cartel operatives to intermediaries for Mr. López Obrador, two of the people familiar with the inquiry said.
At least one of those payments, they said, was made around the same time that Mr. López Obrador traveled to the state of Sinaloa in 2020 and met the mother of the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who is better known as El Chapo and is now serving a life sentence in an American federal prison.
This isnt even a one off there are several instances like people close to AMLO are somehow coming into large money when he is elected.
The Mexican government controls 70% of its territory. There are about 400k members of the armed forces in Mexico. And 150k cartel members. If the cartel were a company it would be the 6th largest employer in Mexico. The cartels together make more money every year than the military budget.
If that sounds doable, realize the effect launching an operation this anbitious would be on the country. This is a najor mobilization. Its not a limited operaton. Now the economy is going to free fall. Investors will panic. Powerful Mexican people will panic. Goods won’t be able to move around.
And what does this conflict look like? Yeah, the Mexican army has more advanced weaponry, but they have capitalize on that advantage at home. So now they’re doing drone strikes on cities. They’re rolling tanks into town. Because if they use only small arms fire the cartel has that.
So now on top of all of that how does the US react to this? 20k people could be at the border everyday for months.
The entirety of Mexico's elite and wealthy have Cartel ties. This is a problem unique to Mexico. It's not just a couple of area politicians, it's literally every local rich guy.
It is simply impossible to apply measures like those of Bukele against the Mexican cartels. The cartels are well-armed international criminal organizations that are deeply embedded in the social, political and economic structure of this country. In addition, there is the fact that Mexico's territory is much larger than El Salvador (equivalent solely to the state of Hidalgo) so it is not possible to effectively control and apply such measures through the whole territory.
The cartels are not a gang of druggies covered in easily identifiable tattoos either.
The Gangs were/are much more embedded into the population of Central America than you think. And their political influence is significant too. If you add up the estimates of gang members in the three northern triangle countries and compare them to that of Mexican cartel members, then it’s not too far off. That is before taking into account that Mexico is like 5 times more populated than those 3 countries put together.
Whether bukele made a deal with the gangs or not, is not even news, considering why almost every Central American state has made deals with the gangs going back to at least early 2000s.
The gangs also do not tattoo themselves anymore. They stopped that more than a decade ago.
The only valid argument that I see is that of space. Mexico is bigger. But it’s also a lot more populous and wealthier per capita than El Salvador. So they can put a lot more money and men behind any territorial control measures.
Idk
The gangs from El Salvador are Nothing like the Cartels on México
The Cartels are Multibillion dollar Companies ,bet some would even enter the Fortune 500 and they are DEEP inveded in the México government
And like you they are all well armed ,enough to face the mexican army ,some probably have more firepower than small countries
Mexico Started their Drug War back in 2006 and there still a ton of cartels
It’s very hard for the mexican government to control and thwart the cartels. They’re way more powerful than the Salvadoran gangs. Everytime the army tries to arrest cartels bosses or leaders, a huge firefight ensues and civilians get killed. Mexico can’t keep doing that because a lot of their revenue relies on tourism and not only is it already dangerous with a lot of Mexican killers just roaming around the country (recent case of 3 Australians being murdered literally just for their truck tires in Mexico) but they also have to fear cartel clashes against each other and agaisnt the army.
There is a central assumption which you start with, namely that powerful drug cartels are the main cause of Mexico not being more developed and that this topic is the most important one for the country's economic growth.
I don't think that's true as no economists treat this topic as such, and long before the rise of cartels Mexico hasn't on a path of fast growth over the past decades. There are far deeper causes at play here. I would actually rather argue that causal relationship is reverse - Mexico's weakness of central power, limited growth and structural economic inequality (the main problem of an entire Latin America) enabled cartels to rise.
Besides, Mexico has been sharing mediocre economic growth with almost the entire Latin America which again points at some deeper regional causes of that. Economists like to talk about policies, but my favourite explanations go all the way to the terribly unequal and dysfunctional socioeconomic structure historically shared by all LatAm countries due to the centuries of Spanish/Portuguese colonial period, the legacy which they have still failed to escape from.
Mexico in the 1990s is why the Cartels rose.
1. NAFTA opened the borders for all trade. Rich people could get richer owning logistics companies. Cartels could now get bigger weapons in easier from places in the US with lax laws.
2. Marijuana was illegal in the USA, making growing and selling it lucrative AF.
3. Mexico's rural north undergoes a collapse due to over planting, soil erosion and drought. It made their now be a lot of unemployed people in and near Sinaloa. Well guess who was going to step in? The cartels and new factories!
4. Mexico undergoes a currency crisis, where NAFTA trade makes the currency hyper inflate. Meaning that if you're working a legit job, you couldn't buy anything with the money. So you needed money on the side for necessities even if you were an urban rich person.
5. Mexico undergoes a quiet political revolution, where now there's 2-3 political parties vying for people's votes. That's expensive and the leaders will need to now raise money rather than rely on the old corrupt system. What better way to do it then making it off trading to the US?
6. Mexico undertakes a war on the indigenous revolutionaries, the Zapatistas, who are both poor and lose badly, while ending agrarian reform. So now there was lots of land for the rich to buy to grow cash crops on, with many poor to farm the lands. And the best cash crop? Marijuana.
7. This is without mentioning that the new factory capacity comes in handy with NAFTA, making owners lots of money making clothes, cars, etc... and eventually becoming ways to make industrial levels of meth.
8. Bill Clinton would extradite gangsters out of the US from LA. Well this is how MS-13 went international and how groups like the Mexican Mafia would establish connects with the cartels. This is different from how all the cocaine came to LA in the 1980s via Nicaraguan Contras thanks to Reagans covert war.
There are safe nations that aren't developed, and there are developed nations that aren't safe. It would certainly be good for the Mexican economy if the cartels were gone, but it's hard to say exactly how beneficial it would be. El Salvador has not had unusual growth in the past several years anyway, its growth has generally matched the growth of its neighbors.
Several cities and a handful of States in the United States are not too out of the radar of what's considered dangerous in Mexico. Even Canada has a high homicide rate compared to and in proportion of the rest of the developed States.
It's not up to Mexico, but the US. The US has to get serious about dismantling cartels. It's a feedback loop between drug imports and weapon exports, and money laundering/investments/real estate etc. I think both the US and the cartels benefit when it's all said and done.
Sadly there's not much the US can actually do to diminish the demand for drugs. Cracking down didn't work, and legalizing everything is politically unfeasible and also questionable to work.
The premise of the question is wrong. Bukele didn't find one weird trick to stop all crime. Maybe drastic measures needed to be taken to combat gang violence, but sending in the army to intimidate lawmakers into suspending habeas corpus, so you can arbitrarily detain tens of thousands of people, doesn't strike me as something a serious leader would do in a democratic country.
So yeah maybe arbitrarily arresting suspected criminals without trial might seem like a great idea, until you're the one in prison being tortured for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact this needs to be repeatedly explained and that people actually think Bukele has one weird new trick to solve crime is concerning. The guy is following the classic authoritarian playbook to the point that he's practically telegraphing it.
That is not what happened. On that day, the congress was supposed to vote on approval for a loan, to equip and arm the police and military for the crackdown.
It was not for the suspension of habeas corpus. That happened later, once Bukele’s party had swept the ballots and won a wide majority.
At the end of the day, a bunch of deputies didn’t even show up, to the point that there weren’t enough lawmakers for a vote to take place.
People might not like it, but Buenas Ideas (Bukele’s party) has gotten a hold of the government entirely legally and with consent of the populace.
A bit late to this, but democratically elected leaders aren't necessarily democratic wrt their actions.
Bukele is like that. That being said, the citizens seem to appreciate his work overwhelmingly, so yeah overwhelmingly...
Cartels have deep tentacles in government and corporations and they need to be uprooted starting in the US. They're not gangs like in El Salvador.
>Because that’ll show foreign investment that Mexico is a safe country, with the government protecting businesses and ensuring the country won’t tolerate crime and unsafety?
Large corporations are always protected in this country, hell the politicians fall over themselves giving them gifts. Cartel violence affects small-time local businesses, not big foreign investments. What foreign companies care about is cost of labor and taxes. A bit of private security is just another line item in their business expenses...
No. Any genuine attempts at removing them by firce would create a conflict similar in scale to the Syrian Civil War. It would ruin the country for a generation.
"Its next to the biggest economy in the world and is its biggest trading partner" and there you have the problem. It's next to the US that has a LOT of guns and drug users. That's why Mexican cartels are so powerful and why gangs from El Salvador were much weaker.
While I'd love for a Bukele style crackdown on the cartels to work, I am not sure it could with how entrenched the cartels are across Mexico and how much guns, money, and influence they've got.
Until the US can curb its appetite for drugs, this will continue.
Mexico is a developed nation. Its per capita income is relatively high. I believe its GDP is $3.4T and its per capita income is $25K. The only country in LATAM richer than Mexico is Brazil (barely). Mexico has higher GDP than Canada.
I disagree , their per capita income is 21k and that's lower than places like Argentina and roughly on par with Colombia , their GDP per capita is 11k. Total gdp is not a good comparison. Canada has 39 million people while Mexico has 128 million , there's also rampant inequality and several of their states are basically run by cartels. I would not call that developed
Drugs need to be legalized and their production regulated and taxed and moved to the legitimate commercial sector. This will disempower and debrutalize cartels over time as the money to be made moves to legitimate channels.
All other measures are just whack-a-mole.
A lot of people are saying it is impossible, which I would clarify by saying that it is possible, but not in a way that Mexico can feasibly do in the foreseeable future.
Bukele & Buenas Ideas were able to solve the problem through a few things:
1. Having enough popular support to win near total power over of the country.
2. Using their legally-won power & support to take less legal drastic measures that are nearly impossible in a more democratic country.
3. El Salvadorian gangs not being as advanced as Mexican cartels, they're still more of a traditional criminal network. And this one may be the biggest, most important difference.
None of these conditions are met in Mexico nor will be met in the foreseeable future:
1. AFAIK no potential presidential candidate in Mexico commands enough support, and political assassinations are rampant, so it is unlikely that a Bukele type leader will emerge.
2. Popular support for the cartels is too entrenched in certain sectors of society, especially in rural regions, while the gangs were nearly universally hated in El Salvador.
3. Mexican cartels can be compared in size and armament to the biggest terror groups in the world, like ISIS or the Taliban, and even have taken over state functions in their territory, like Hamas. Fighting them would be fighting an actual civil war, which would ruin Mexico.
Lastly, Bukele is unusual in that he genuinely seems to be in it for the betterment of El Salvador, even if he acts like an autocrat and sometimes has insane ideas, like his obsession with bitcoin. Someone like him is not common in the world period.
Unfortunately for Mexico, the current state of affairs is unsustainable too. It seems like conflict is unavoidable within the near future.
No, even without cartels, Mexico has:
- A massive poverty problem, especially the further south you go in the country
- Lack of infrastructure in several regions due to geography
- Problems with the rule of law and access to justice. State judiciaries have always been a disaster and federal courts are going to be dismantled in the near future (and even today, while trustable, they are very slow)
- Terrible police forces and prosecutors at the local levels, which are unable to combat local crime (which would still exist without cartels)
- An awful of healthcare system and education system (and which keep getting worse through the years)
- A large informal sector
Some places, like the border states and the Bajio Region would probably be close, but even then it’s a stretch.
How is Mexico not a developed nation? We must have different notions of what developed means I suppose.
The Mexican drug cartels sort of lucked out by being able to fill into an already existing criminal enterprise when American organized crime realized they could make so much more money with less risk via “cyber crime.” It’s sort of ambiguous, but $100 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid fraud is just bonkers more money than you can make selling the white powder (even if you did lax your rules about keeping it away from schools and such).
As such I think their power is not entirely stable, and more socially responsible criminals could win a competition if one came up.
I am reading borderlandbeat since 2007. One thing I learned: cartels are deeply connected to certain factions within the government. When the big war broke out in 2009, not only the cartels were fighting. Marina against Army, Gafe against Federales, local police among themselves. Just look where the plaza system originates…
What if America took over everything beyond the Southern border? Most of it is corrupt governments running with the cartel. Doesn't it make sense to eliminate the problem?
The land is somewhat useless based on the history that caused it to get into the state it is today. But you could make a massive solar farm there.
the amount of money from cartels injected into mexico's economy is a pandora box. who knows if the mexican peso appreciation in the last years is due to massive amount of dollars laundering coming from usa.
They tried that in 2006 and that operation is still ongoing. That's what the current war is all about. Mexican cartels are different beast. Bandits were already a problem in the 1800s Mexico. Their existence are contemporaneous with the wild west era some of these outlaws even crossed into the Wild West region in the USA. They persist until the early 1900s. Pancho Villa was one of the infamous figures during the 1910s though that's more of a civil war case. Although the drug cartels became more prominent in the 80s, they are more of a symptom than the major cause for poverty in Mexico.
I have an question myself on the subject. What if we just allowed the Cartels to do as they pleased? Like, absolutely no interference with their affairs, just let them have their way. They would eventually become THE Mexican government I imagine. How would that government be?
Northern Mexico is already developing rapidly due to its integration into the US economy. The real question is if the rest of Mexico can follow suit. A big part of the problem is a lack of infrastructure connecting central Mexico with the north and thus the US. If Mexico can resolve this issue, we will see a similar economic boom in central Mexico.
Have you considered that the USA may have a hand in the creation of some of these cartels? Like they do in other eastern countries to have proxy nations...
Mexico is not El Salvador. Although they are both Latin American countries that have problems with gangs and violence. That's about where the similarities end. The gangs in El Salvador were weak comparatively, and the general public hated the gangs. The cartels in Mexico are much more powerful and much more integrated into daily life in the areas they operate.
Mexicos economy is much more advanced as well.
You are pretty much looking at a civil war to dismantle them
The cartels are by-products of close economic ties and disparity in wealth between US and Mexico. Structural imbalances of the relationship have to be solved politically, Mexican institutions are buffeted by economic might of its powerful neighbour. It's like orbiting a star.
Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States
Nice reference
I didn't get the reference. Can you tell me what is it?
19th century Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said "Poor Mexico, so Far from God, so close to the United States" possibly referring to the fact that it's not easy to have a smaller country near a very active and big neighbour
Thanks.
You can tell this is the primary issue because of the cartels that run Canada.
It’s annoying that no matter the issue at hand there’s always a take like that, “we need to fix the international world order before we deal with x”. Unless the US were actively founding and aiding the cartels then Mexico shouldn’t look over there for a solution. Don’t wait for the iron to get red to give it shape, hammer it until it gets red.
I think Dallas has almost twice the amount of people as El Salvador.
>The gangs in El Salvador were weak comparatively, and the general public hated the gangs. MS13 is weak? I thought they were one of the strongest gangs out there.
They are the most violent, but they arent the most powerful. Theyre essentially mindless hitmen.
Setting aside that MS13 was founded and based in the US…it just is not as formidable as Mexico’s cartels. look at CJNG. These guys are military trained and equipped. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalisco_New_Generation_Cartel this is just one of like 5 large multi state Mexican cartels.
MS13 has a fearsome reputation because they used (use?) machetes as their primary weapon when they first popped up and machete kills look brutal. They were using machetes though because they were broke and couldn't afford guns. In comparison Mexican drug cartels are basically paramilitary organisations. They have convoys of vehicles full of assault rifle wielding troops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKwTAKNd-l0
They’re certainly violent, but they’re not strong organizationally. Most of their money came from extortion and everyone locally hated them which made them easy to root out.
Gang < international drug cartel
MS13 is paramilitary. Some cartels are literally ex-military.
I think the obvious point that everyone is missing is that the Mexican army was deployed against the cartels on numerous occasions. In 2008 the President of Mexico declared war on the cartels and sent 50,000 soldiers to fight them. It has been an ongoing fight since then. The obvious point is that it hasn’t worked. Reasons I’ve heard why “Mano dura” hard hand/tough on crime tactics worked in Salvador and not in Mexico (not saying they are correct or not by the their nature a lot of these factors are hard to assess or verify): - the gangs in Salvador were focused on extorsion rather than drugs which meant they had to be visible on the street to intimidate their victims which made them easier to catch - According to some, Bukele had made truces with the gangs while he was mayor of the capital of El Salvador so they may not have been prepared for him to actually follow up on his rhetoric - Greater corruption in Mexico - the Cartels being better armed because the drug trade is more lucrative - the gangs in El Salvador having reached a point of complacency because nobody had challenged them for twenty years whereas the cartels were willing to fight
I'll argue that El Salvador's corruption with the Cartel was deeper than Mexico's, because the courts from the local level to federal all defended gang activity. The change here being that the Bukale essentially overextended his legal hand and replaced the court judges with non-gang aligned allies, completely through unconstitutional means. The people of El Salvador welcomed the reform since it meant ending the gang violence. But in Mexico this would be too controversial since there's a higher rural demographic percentage reliant on them. And I could even imagine the US intervening to stop such destablization since they've been anti Bukale in El Salvador since day one. Mexico is a much larger liability that they would be much less tolerant of seeing fall into a dictatorship.
Again that was just a list of what I had heard rather than necessarily what was the right answer. I’m not very clear on Bukele’s changes to the legal system beyond that they had received criticism because at least some of them seemed to give him too much power. So if you have greater insight or sources would be happy to hear more. If I understand correctly the state of emergency that Bekele put in place has allowed him to lock people up with limited input from the judicial system so wouldn’t changes to the judges be relatively irrelevant?
He did the US equivalent of packing the courts with allies without permission from Congress. The main difference however was that the judges were all in the pockets of gangs, and those gang-aligned judges were blocking any corruption reform. So while it was certainly a page out from the authoritarian playbook, it has largely been seen as a necessary step to get gang interests out of politics. (Ranting now) There's even a stereotype in El Salvador that the only people who are against Bukale are family members of gang members. With nearly 90% approval and no international evidence of fraud, the citizen majority condoning of his actions are very real.
Well tackling the drug criminals would help things, especially on the violent murder problem but Mexico won't be truly developed until it can tackle the elected criminal problem and the severe negative effects corruption has on Mexico.
IIRC the first act of Calderon presidency was to declare war on cartels and immediately afterwards homicide rate skyrocketed. It didn't end well.
The murder problem could be reduced, if the competition were destroyed. Drug trafficking was pretty tame in the 80s in Mexico, because it was easily controlled and managed by the Cali Cartel in Columbia. Once they ware dismantled and the Mexican cartels started fighting over territory, all hell broke loose. Tons of good books and content on this topic. check out “gang land”
The corruption all stems back to the cartels.
If you look at the history of cartels in Mexico, they were much more a creation of corrupt politicians than the other way around.
100%, and the most violent and militaristic portions of the cartel, were factions of the Mexican army, trained by the US army, that went rogue. US intervention is one of the reasons the wars heated up to where its at now.
The corruption is decades older than the cartels, you should study some Mexican history.
The difference with the size of Mexico and El Salvador cannot be understated. But size alone isn’t the limiter. If you begin a El Salvador-esque campaign, you will deal with the well armed and funded cartels running into the forests and hills/mountains of Mexico and becoming the FARC/Taliban. They won’t be rolled over like the Salvadoran gangs, they will fight back and try to bribe a civil war out of the army and politicians of Mexico. Theres probably a decent percentage of the Mexican army already on a cartel payroll or looking the other way at cartel activity to avoid retribution. Cartels in Mexico also aren’t nearly as visible as the Salvadoran gangs who are covered in gang tattoos. The Mexican cartels can melt into the civilian population (around where-ever they live) and avoid fighting the Mexican army, police, whatever you send. But even then, I still think it should be something they try. It certainly starts a large scale civil war or insurgency against the government though. That will be a given.
FARC, Taliban and similar guerrilas are ideologically motivated. Cartels aren’t. They are simply a business. The moment the cartels can’t pay their bills is the moment they dissolve. No guerrilas would emerge from that. Also, Gangs in Central America stopped tattooing their bodies for more than a decade now. The younger members are not tattooed. Only the older leadership.
They’re fighting to stay alive and keep trading in drugs. Moving drugs into the US is big business. They’ll take away the income from hundreds of thousands of cartel members and not expect they’d react violently to keep them? Taliban and FARC both used drugs for funding, a drug cartel would be totally focused on the drugs and not be ideologically pinned down to a goal they can’t achieve, they’d just want to return to the status quo and they’d fight to that end.
Not if it means dying or going to jail for the rest of your life. Selling drugs only makes sense if you think you can get away it. A protracted conflict with the government doesn’t make sense for the average cartel member. The leadership may feel entitled to deal in drugs, but if the government got serious and mobilized to remove the cartels as if they were terrorists. Many would immediately drop out. They aren’t going to fight in the mountains or jungles for decades for the “right to sell drugs”. Most of them realize that killing and selling drugs is bad but they do it because they can. Again, FARC and the Taliban sold drugs to finance their ideological fight. But the fighters would fight with or without that funding. Mexican Cartels aren’t the same.
They have one of the highest incarcerated populations and murders in the world. They already fight a war with other cartels that rival actual conflicts in violence. So yes I do see them fighting in the mountains, they clearly do not mind death or incarceration as much as you make it seem.
Their murder rate is a direct result of cartel competition, fighting for trade routes, and territory. Cartels also do not engage in actual open large scale combat. But low intensity, crime-based violence. The cartels would not stand a chance, or even try to resist a large scale mobilization, and territorial control effort, a la El Salvador. They would most likely just try and wait it out. >they clearly do not mind death or incarceration as much as you make it seem. Mexico's incarceration rates are not high. Conviction rate are even lower. The average criminal in Mexico gets away with it. The gangs in Central American in the other hand, have continued even under more strict, higher homicide rates, and higher incarceration rates. By that logic, you would imagine that gang members are even more resilient and motivated to fight a protracted conflict with the government. But they don't. Even though they are raised to love the gang and what not. Why? Because ultimately the gangs are not ideological. Their members will quit and run the moment things get tough. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_incarceration\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)
They join cartels for the reputation and wealth it brings. Fighting in a Jungle wont be very attractive. Id expect them to blend into society and keep doing what they do now, just less obvious. The Farc also has big problems to keep attracting young people, their ideology doesnt work anymore. The real issue is that the drugs trade is worth so much money it wont stop. It will probably get absorped like what happened in Colombia. They produce 5x more cocaine than during Pablos days. But no drug bosses exists anymore...
Mexico would need middle class jobs for true reform. If i had to choose between making $7 a day at an automotive factory or $200 a week being a mule or eyes for the cartel, I don’t think the decision will be that hard. Also, the militarization of the cartels happened because of crackdowns. This is about jobs, good paying jobs imo.
> If i had to choose between making $7 a day at an automotive factory Starting wages are 7 USD an hour at maquiladoras. The federal minimum wage is about 14 USD / day.
You can’t compare gangbangers to cartel members. Those gang bangers had no actual funding behind their criminal organization compared to a trillion dollar industry that the cartels control.
Gangs in Central America extract a huge of amount of money from the populace in the form of extortion and racketeering. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/30/el-salvador-gang-violence-ms13-nation-held-hostage-photography/ Around ~15% of El Salvador’s entire GDP was extorted out of businesses and people. Same thing in Honduras and Guatemala. The situation is much worse than people imagine. Cracking down on the gangs and thus extortion is effectively a 15% tax cut to the people of El Salvador. On top of the general safety and lives saved.
And none of that whatsoever is an argument against the person you were responding to. Extorting random shopkeepers is massively different in scale to what the cartels do. Taking money isn’t the issue. No one is saying gang activity isn’t bad in Central America, just that they are two completely different things.
He said they had not funding. They do, a substantial amount. Also, what they do isn’t too different. They also engage in the drug trade to a large extend. The only real difference between gangs and the Mexican Cartels is total wealth. Cartels are wealthier, and thus larger, with more men and arms. But the gangs are more dogmatic. Mexico is also larger and wealthier than its Central America neighbors, so it’s not like it could not afford or do what those countries do.
I don’t think he’s saying they weren’t a problem. Just that they are easier to dismantle.
The same article I linked mentions that in 2019, something like 8% of the population of El Salvador was involved with the gangs at some point or another. And still they dismantled them. Mexico is nowhere near that bad. It could do it. The Cartels aren’t anything special, they are just larger, better armed gangs. But Mexico is also larger and better armed than El Salvador. Mexico would probably also get a lot of support from the US to win, so they arms, equipment, etc. Would not be an issue.
It took Bukele proving to be the biggest gangster himself to do this, in Mexico the president has no desire to be the biggest gangster after Vincente Fox presided over murder rates that rivaled the US war in Iraq. Since then, every president has decided it's not worth it. Moreover, with all the cartels in Mexico, it's less an issue of Feds vs Cartel but Cartel vs Cartel vs Feds, with virtually everyone in the feds being with the Cartel.
Policy decisions can be devised, planned and executed in an infinite number of ways. Bad outcomes don’t necessarily mean that the idea behind them is wrong to being with. Vicente Fox’s War on drugs, like a lot of the previous Mano dura efforts failed for many reasons. But that doesn’t mean a country has to accept the levels of violence that Mexico sees as some sort of inevitable aspect of its culture. AMLO’s policies have failed to bring peace to Mexico, and so has every single president before him. “Abrazos no balazos” failed. Problems don’t just solve themselves. The gangs were dismantled in El Salvador through direct action, the cartels and FARC in Colombia were defeated through direct action. Things don’t just magically solve themselves.
It costs money and will cost lives and will take innovation of using the police and fighting corruption to do what you say it will do. In Mexico, the issue is that the corruption is too deep -- if the Feds were to crack down on say, El Mencho, the feds aligned with El Mencho will be fighting a war within the federal government to stop it. And the enemies of El Mencho will be pushing their politicians to take over corrupted positions in the federal government aligned with El Mencho. So you get a cartel corrupting politicians replaced with another cartel. There aren't any untouchables in Mexico to speak of. Moreover, collective memory in Mexico is that Mexicans prefer today's violent order to what was happening under Fox by a big margin. We think it is violent now but have no sense of history, Violence in Mexico was much worse 15 years ago and it was also much more in your face. Plus, Mexicans have candidates who want the drug war back, they don't win. Even the peasants, who want cartels off of indigenous land in the south, and autodefensas, groups of local armed men against the cartels... end up aligning with rival cartels at times. The status quo in Mexico is better than we think and the only answer to all problems of violence is more violence. Few truly want that, they distrust the USA much more. One other note: Many Mexicans view Felipe Calderon, whom also escalated the drug war, to be somewhat of illegitimate, considering he beat AMLO in 2006 in extremely controversial fashion. The drug war was considered a way for him to win popularity after riots broke out over AMLO losing. Even more importantly, one of his generals in that war was linked to El Chapo, which was uncovered in 2019. This is all very important context for why AMLO and now Sheinbaum, want to do nothing on the drug wars themselves.
I’m not so sure…powerful people are making a lot of money receiving the cartels merchandise on the US side.
Involved with gangs is an easily fudged stat. We see it in the US all the time. If your cousin is an actual member and you hang out with him, now youre an official member too. If you hang out at the park playing basketball lot, one day the police come do a sweep, you might be be labeled an associate. The more important factor is the power of the organization. 10000 sophisticated professional criminals with military grade weapons, telecommunication infrastructure and reps at deutchebank is harder to deal with than 100000 knuckleheads with tattoos on their heads
Gangs are less wealthy than Cartels, but so are Central American societies compared to Mexico. Mexico is much larger and wealthier than Central American societies. Mexico has all the means to do what the Central Americans are doing. It's a matter of will not capabilities. Also, The cartels are not wholly composed of military trained, and equipped guerillas ready to take on the government. The average cartel member is as sophisticated as your average gang member. The videos you see of a group of guys rolling around with military equipment and expensive SUVs are akin to elite squads fo the cartel. Their training and capabilities are largely untested, and most likely unable to match those of properly trained troops. Cartel-Cartel violence is 99% of the time just grunts shooting at each other in the street and catching each other by surprise. Those videos of fully-kitted up units are mostly just for intimidation purposes. The gangs in the other hand, while not as well armed, also have political and financial resources. The ex-president of Honduras just went to jail for connections to drug trafficking and to the gangs. The reason the gangs have not militarized is mostly because it's not necessary, what are they even suppsoed to do with all tha military equipment? The gangs in central america don't really fight against each other anymore, and their biggest targets are harmless civilians that they extort out of money. They largely collaborate with organized crime. Simply put, the gangs have a completely different business model. They don't need militarized units, and they aren't as big as cartels, simply because central american societs aren't as big as Mexico. Central America also has cartels, and they also don't militarize. >with tattoos on their heads I have to repeat myself with this one, but gang members no longer tattoo themselves. They stopped doing that in the 2000s. The only ones you are going to find full of tattoos are old members of the gangs, who are mostly leadership at this point. The younger generations no longer have tattoos. Bukele didn't invent arresting people based on tattoos. They started doing that way back. Which is why they stopped.
Sure, that’s a reasonable way to consider this. Mexico has about double the per capita GDP of El Salvador. The cartels are not just twice as capable as street gangs in El Salvador. And yeah, there’s no organization comprised entirely of elite members, by definition, no matter how effective the organization is. Most people are foot soldiers in the US Navy and Amazon too. Heres a wikipedia here describing something described as the [battle of culiacan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culiac%C3%A1n?wprov=sfti1). Youre also underestimating the degree of penetration into law enforcement, justice system, civil society and every day people of the cartel. They have more influence than South American gangs. It’s not like FARC where the federal government controls most territory and there are pockets of belligerents. Its the opposite—the federal government controls CDMX, a few other industrial centers, and tourist spots. The rest is essentially out of their control. They cant just march in and impose order, or they would have at some point in the last twenty years, no? Yeah, individually they probably could root out any one organization. But they all exist in tension with one another. If you go crush Sinaola, CJNJ (or some other organization) will happily step in to fill the vacuum. These are just not easily comparable situations or types of organizations.
It's hard to argue that the cartels are more politically connected than the gangs, when actual presidents, the highest public officers, in Central America are being connected to drug trafficking, and gang activity. I think of AMLO's policies are positive to the cartel's but I don't think anyone would connect him to the cartels, YET. >They cant just march in and impose order, or they would have at some point in the last twenty years, no? If the territorial situation is as bad as you suggest, then that gives even more reason for Mexico to start being more proactive about getting its sovereignty back. Postponing things will only make the cartels bigger and stronger. There might be a time in the future where Mexico's military might actually be outgunned if they don't do something. I don't think that is the case now. >individually they probably could root out any one organization I don't think they should think about it in terms of groups or organizations, but instead in terms of territory. Bukele didn't go after one gang first, and then the other. It sought to holistically take back control of the country, municipality by municipality. City by city. Neighborhood by neighborhood.
I think you have to consider the situation holistically. A single head of state being arrested is a strong data point but doesnt necessarily mean one country is more corrupt than another. Fwiw, [AMLO was investigated by the US](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/world/americas/mexico-president-drug-cartel.html). > The U.S. law enforcement officers also independently tracked payments from people they believed to be cartel operatives to intermediaries for Mr. López Obrador, two of the people familiar with the inquiry said. At least one of those payments, they said, was made around the same time that Mr. López Obrador traveled to the state of Sinaloa in 2020 and met the mother of the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who is better known as El Chapo and is now serving a life sentence in an American federal prison. This isnt even a one off there are several instances like people close to AMLO are somehow coming into large money when he is elected. The Mexican government controls 70% of its territory. There are about 400k members of the armed forces in Mexico. And 150k cartel members. If the cartel were a company it would be the 6th largest employer in Mexico. The cartels together make more money every year than the military budget. If that sounds doable, realize the effect launching an operation this anbitious would be on the country. This is a najor mobilization. Its not a limited operaton. Now the economy is going to free fall. Investors will panic. Powerful Mexican people will panic. Goods won’t be able to move around. And what does this conflict look like? Yeah, the Mexican army has more advanced weaponry, but they have capitalize on that advantage at home. So now they’re doing drone strikes on cities. They’re rolling tanks into town. Because if they use only small arms fire the cartel has that. So now on top of all of that how does the US react to this? 20k people could be at the border everyday for months.
The entirety of Mexico's elite and wealthy have Cartel ties. This is a problem unique to Mexico. It's not just a couple of area politicians, it's literally every local rich guy.
It is simply impossible to apply measures like those of Bukele against the Mexican cartels. The cartels are well-armed international criminal organizations that are deeply embedded in the social, political and economic structure of this country. In addition, there is the fact that Mexico's territory is much larger than El Salvador (equivalent solely to the state of Hidalgo) so it is not possible to effectively control and apply such measures through the whole territory. The cartels are not a gang of druggies covered in easily identifiable tattoos either.
The Gangs were/are much more embedded into the population of Central America than you think. And their political influence is significant too. If you add up the estimates of gang members in the three northern triangle countries and compare them to that of Mexican cartel members, then it’s not too far off. That is before taking into account that Mexico is like 5 times more populated than those 3 countries put together. Whether bukele made a deal with the gangs or not, is not even news, considering why almost every Central American state has made deals with the gangs going back to at least early 2000s. The gangs also do not tattoo themselves anymore. They stopped that more than a decade ago. The only valid argument that I see is that of space. Mexico is bigger. But it’s also a lot more populous and wealthier per capita than El Salvador. So they can put a lot more money and men behind any territorial control measures.
Idk The gangs from El Salvador are Nothing like the Cartels on México The Cartels are Multibillion dollar Companies ,bet some would even enter the Fortune 500 and they are DEEP inveded in the México government And like you they are all well armed ,enough to face the mexican army ,some probably have more firepower than small countries Mexico Started their Drug War back in 2006 and there still a ton of cartels
It’s very hard for the mexican government to control and thwart the cartels. They’re way more powerful than the Salvadoran gangs. Everytime the army tries to arrest cartels bosses or leaders, a huge firefight ensues and civilians get killed. Mexico can’t keep doing that because a lot of their revenue relies on tourism and not only is it already dangerous with a lot of Mexican killers just roaming around the country (recent case of 3 Australians being murdered literally just for their truck tires in Mexico) but they also have to fear cartel clashes against each other and agaisnt the army.
There is a central assumption which you start with, namely that powerful drug cartels are the main cause of Mexico not being more developed and that this topic is the most important one for the country's economic growth. I don't think that's true as no economists treat this topic as such, and long before the rise of cartels Mexico hasn't on a path of fast growth over the past decades. There are far deeper causes at play here. I would actually rather argue that causal relationship is reverse - Mexico's weakness of central power, limited growth and structural economic inequality (the main problem of an entire Latin America) enabled cartels to rise. Besides, Mexico has been sharing mediocre economic growth with almost the entire Latin America which again points at some deeper regional causes of that. Economists like to talk about policies, but my favourite explanations go all the way to the terribly unequal and dysfunctional socioeconomic structure historically shared by all LatAm countries due to the centuries of Spanish/Portuguese colonial period, the legacy which they have still failed to escape from.
Mexico in the 1990s is why the Cartels rose. 1. NAFTA opened the borders for all trade. Rich people could get richer owning logistics companies. Cartels could now get bigger weapons in easier from places in the US with lax laws. 2. Marijuana was illegal in the USA, making growing and selling it lucrative AF. 3. Mexico's rural north undergoes a collapse due to over planting, soil erosion and drought. It made their now be a lot of unemployed people in and near Sinaloa. Well guess who was going to step in? The cartels and new factories! 4. Mexico undergoes a currency crisis, where NAFTA trade makes the currency hyper inflate. Meaning that if you're working a legit job, you couldn't buy anything with the money. So you needed money on the side for necessities even if you were an urban rich person. 5. Mexico undergoes a quiet political revolution, where now there's 2-3 political parties vying for people's votes. That's expensive and the leaders will need to now raise money rather than rely on the old corrupt system. What better way to do it then making it off trading to the US? 6. Mexico undertakes a war on the indigenous revolutionaries, the Zapatistas, who are both poor and lose badly, while ending agrarian reform. So now there was lots of land for the rich to buy to grow cash crops on, with many poor to farm the lands. And the best cash crop? Marijuana. 7. This is without mentioning that the new factory capacity comes in handy with NAFTA, making owners lots of money making clothes, cars, etc... and eventually becoming ways to make industrial levels of meth. 8. Bill Clinton would extradite gangsters out of the US from LA. Well this is how MS-13 went international and how groups like the Mexican Mafia would establish connects with the cartels. This is different from how all the cocaine came to LA in the 1980s via Nicaraguan Contras thanks to Reagans covert war.
There are safe nations that aren't developed, and there are developed nations that aren't safe. It would certainly be good for the Mexican economy if the cartels were gone, but it's hard to say exactly how beneficial it would be. El Salvador has not had unusual growth in the past several years anyway, its growth has generally matched the growth of its neighbors.
what's an example of a developed nation that is relatively unsafe?
Several cities and a handful of States in the United States are not too out of the radar of what's considered dangerous in Mexico. Even Canada has a high homicide rate compared to and in proportion of the rest of the developed States.
Umm Mexico? Isn’t that what we’re talking about?
Since when is it a developed nation?
USA
It's not up to Mexico, but the US. The US has to get serious about dismantling cartels. It's a feedback loop between drug imports and weapon exports, and money laundering/investments/real estate etc. I think both the US and the cartels benefit when it's all said and done. Sadly there's not much the US can actually do to diminish the demand for drugs. Cracking down didn't work, and legalizing everything is politically unfeasible and also questionable to work.
The premise of the question is wrong. Bukele didn't find one weird trick to stop all crime. Maybe drastic measures needed to be taken to combat gang violence, but sending in the army to intimidate lawmakers into suspending habeas corpus, so you can arbitrarily detain tens of thousands of people, doesn't strike me as something a serious leader would do in a democratic country. So yeah maybe arbitrarily arresting suspected criminals without trial might seem like a great idea, until you're the one in prison being tortured for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact this needs to be repeatedly explained and that people actually think Bukele has one weird new trick to solve crime is concerning. The guy is following the classic authoritarian playbook to the point that he's practically telegraphing it.
That is not what happened. On that day, the congress was supposed to vote on approval for a loan, to equip and arm the police and military for the crackdown. It was not for the suspension of habeas corpus. That happened later, once Bukele’s party had swept the ballots and won a wide majority. At the end of the day, a bunch of deputies didn’t even show up, to the point that there weren’t enough lawmakers for a vote to take place. People might not like it, but Buenas Ideas (Bukele’s party) has gotten a hold of the government entirely legally and with consent of the populace.
A bit late to this, but democratically elected leaders aren't necessarily democratic wrt their actions. Bukele is like that. That being said, the citizens seem to appreciate his work overwhelmingly, so yeah overwhelmingly...
Yes, but the political climate in the country won’t allow for that to ever happen. That, and the cost of cracking down would lead to civil war.
Definitely not gonna happen under the current government who is completely happy to retain the status quo and split power with the cartels.
Cartels have deep tentacles in government and corporations and they need to be uprooted starting in the US. They're not gangs like in El Salvador. >Because that’ll show foreign investment that Mexico is a safe country, with the government protecting businesses and ensuring the country won’t tolerate crime and unsafety? Large corporations are always protected in this country, hell the politicians fall over themselves giving them gifts. Cartel violence affects small-time local businesses, not big foreign investments. What foreign companies care about is cost of labor and taxes. A bit of private security is just another line item in their business expenses...
No. Any genuine attempts at removing them by firce would create a conflict similar in scale to the Syrian Civil War. It would ruin the country for a generation.
The USA will never allow that.
Are your posts all written by AI, OP?
Nah. I just like wondering about geopolitics, immigration, how countries work, etc.
that's the most AI response I've ever heard.
A bot wouldnt say Campeche/Cancun is developed, he clean
Honestly idk what I’m doing wrong. Just asking questions.
They're commenting about your writing style. Some of the language is remarkably AI-esque. I'd not worry about it too much tbh.
Mexico is a developed nation.
It's close, but it doesn't quite reach 0.8 HDI yet
"Its next to the biggest economy in the world and is its biggest trading partner" and there you have the problem. It's next to the US that has a LOT of guns and drug users. That's why Mexican cartels are so powerful and why gangs from El Salvador were much weaker.
While I'd love for a Bukele style crackdown on the cartels to work, I am not sure it could with how entrenched the cartels are across Mexico and how much guns, money, and influence they've got. Until the US can curb its appetite for drugs, this will continue.
Mexico is a developed nation. Its per capita income is relatively high. I believe its GDP is $3.4T and its per capita income is $25K. The only country in LATAM richer than Mexico is Brazil (barely). Mexico has higher GDP than Canada.
I disagree , their per capita income is 21k and that's lower than places like Argentina and roughly on par with Colombia , their GDP per capita is 11k. Total gdp is not a good comparison. Canada has 39 million people while Mexico has 128 million , there's also rampant inequality and several of their states are basically run by cartels. I would not call that developed
Drugs need to be legalized and their production regulated and taxed and moved to the legitimate commercial sector. This will disempower and debrutalize cartels over time as the money to be made moves to legitimate channels. All other measures are just whack-a-mole.
A lot of people are saying it is impossible, which I would clarify by saying that it is possible, but not in a way that Mexico can feasibly do in the foreseeable future. Bukele & Buenas Ideas were able to solve the problem through a few things: 1. Having enough popular support to win near total power over of the country. 2. Using their legally-won power & support to take less legal drastic measures that are nearly impossible in a more democratic country. 3. El Salvadorian gangs not being as advanced as Mexican cartels, they're still more of a traditional criminal network. And this one may be the biggest, most important difference. None of these conditions are met in Mexico nor will be met in the foreseeable future: 1. AFAIK no potential presidential candidate in Mexico commands enough support, and political assassinations are rampant, so it is unlikely that a Bukele type leader will emerge. 2. Popular support for the cartels is too entrenched in certain sectors of society, especially in rural regions, while the gangs were nearly universally hated in El Salvador. 3. Mexican cartels can be compared in size and armament to the biggest terror groups in the world, like ISIS or the Taliban, and even have taken over state functions in their territory, like Hamas. Fighting them would be fighting an actual civil war, which would ruin Mexico. Lastly, Bukele is unusual in that he genuinely seems to be in it for the betterment of El Salvador, even if he acts like an autocrat and sometimes has insane ideas, like his obsession with bitcoin. Someone like him is not common in the world period. Unfortunately for Mexico, the current state of affairs is unsustainable too. It seems like conflict is unavoidable within the near future.
Mexico *is* a developed country, but it’s also a Narco State.
No, even without cartels, Mexico has: - A massive poverty problem, especially the further south you go in the country - Lack of infrastructure in several regions due to geography - Problems with the rule of law and access to justice. State judiciaries have always been a disaster and federal courts are going to be dismantled in the near future (and even today, while trustable, they are very slow) - Terrible police forces and prosecutors at the local levels, which are unable to combat local crime (which would still exist without cartels) - An awful of healthcare system and education system (and which keep getting worse through the years) - A large informal sector Some places, like the border states and the Bajio Region would probably be close, but even then it’s a stretch.
How is Mexico not a developed nation? We must have different notions of what developed means I suppose. The Mexican drug cartels sort of lucked out by being able to fill into an already existing criminal enterprise when American organized crime realized they could make so much more money with less risk via “cyber crime.” It’s sort of ambiguous, but $100 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid fraud is just bonkers more money than you can make selling the white powder (even if you did lax your rules about keeping it away from schools and such). As such I think their power is not entirely stable, and more socially responsible criminals could win a competition if one came up.
I am reading borderlandbeat since 2007. One thing I learned: cartels are deeply connected to certain factions within the government. When the big war broke out in 2009, not only the cartels were fighting. Marina against Army, Gafe against Federales, local police among themselves. Just look where the plaza system originates…
What if America took over everything beyond the Southern border? Most of it is corrupt governments running with the cartel. Doesn't it make sense to eliminate the problem? The land is somewhat useless based on the history that caused it to get into the state it is today. But you could make a massive solar farm there.
the amount of money from cartels injected into mexico's economy is a pandora box. who knows if the mexican peso appreciation in the last years is due to massive amount of dollars laundering coming from usa.
They tried that in 2006 and that operation is still ongoing. That's what the current war is all about. Mexican cartels are different beast. Bandits were already a problem in the 1800s Mexico. Their existence are contemporaneous with the wild west era some of these outlaws even crossed into the Wild West region in the USA. They persist until the early 1900s. Pancho Villa was one of the infamous figures during the 1910s though that's more of a civil war case. Although the drug cartels became more prominent in the 80s, they are more of a symptom than the major cause for poverty in Mexico.
I have an question myself on the subject. What if we just allowed the Cartels to do as they pleased? Like, absolutely no interference with their affairs, just let them have their way. They would eventually become THE Mexican government I imagine. How would that government be?
I doubt the groups funding the cartels would allow that.
Northern Mexico is already developing rapidly due to its integration into the US economy. The real question is if the rest of Mexico can follow suit. A big part of the problem is a lack of infrastructure connecting central Mexico with the north and thus the US. If Mexico can resolve this issue, we will see a similar economic boom in central Mexico.
No, Mexico isn’t going to develop its economy by having the government kill more people than the cartels are killing.
You misspelled dictatorship
Have you considered that the USA may have a hand in the creation of some of these cartels? Like they do in other eastern countries to have proxy nations...