On Mexico's Agony

John and I had a discussion regarding Mexico' slide. John starts:

To me this shows the utter hopelessness of trying to live a normal life in Mexico. The killers are worse than subhuman:

The woman mayor who was kidnapped and murdered by a Mexican drug gang pleaded with her attackers for her young daughter’s life, it emerged today.

Maria Santos Gorrostieta, who had already survived two assassination attempts, was driving the child to school at around 8.30am when she was ambushed by a car in the city of Morelia.

The 36-year-old was hauled from her vehicle and physically assaulted as horrified witnesses watched, according to newspaper El Universal.

I replied:

For a brief while I chose the city of Mazatlan (because my 2010 cruise stopped there), and tried to track the shootings there.

The northern Mexican Pacific coast has been affected less by the violence, probably since the Sinaloa cartel is headquartered there, runs everything, and faces no immediate challenges in its back yard. Still, there are problems. In Mazatlan, the shootings were occurring mostly in one specific neighborhood (on or near the road heading NNE out of the city) and aimed at specific people with a connection to the political structure (I recall a retired policeman was hit). So, even though the violence may appear random to outsiders, it probably isn’t. Cunning strategic and tactical thought is being employed. It’s like a civil war, in some senses.

It’s very, very dangerous being connected to the administration of Mexico right now, no matter how humble the job. If retired policemen are open targets, or small-town mayors, just about anyone with any official connection is in danger. Certain people, like prison wardens in the north of the country, are particularly endangered. It takes serious stones to be involved in government at any level in Mexico right now.

John replied:

There are pockets of relative safety and normalcy in any country but it seems to me that areas of Mexico bear strong similarities to failed states in sub-Saharan Africa with no real law or social stability.

I recently read a book called Blood River--an account of a trip made by an English journalist along the Congo River in 2004. The people in that country (Democratic Republic of Congo) are in constant fear of bands of any number of paramilitary groups who survive by stealing from villagers and are armed by various criminal operations. Such groups have no fear because there is no government so they know that can steal, rape and kill with abandon. That sort of situation either enables or creates psychopaths and there is no solution, in my opinion, short of a brutal and unrelenting military campaign against them. But in a state with limited to non-existent military power there is not much that can be done. Military operations by foreign powers are usually not too successful in such situations (although Vietnam moving against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was a notable exception).

Blood River tells of how, from the early 1900's until the early 1960's, Congo was a successful (albeit colonial) nation with a large part of the population working at productive jobs in mining, agriculture and transportation and living comfortable lives (by African standards). Now the jungle has reclaimed the large network of paved roads and railways--the cities are in ruins with nothing resembling water or sewage systems or electricity. Diseases which were at least partially under control 60 years ago are now rampant. There are no significant exports aside from gold and diamonds which are mined with slave labor and whose profits go into Swiss bank accounts controlled by criminals.

There are differences of course, primarily because the proximity of the United States creates a chance for escape for the Mexican people in lawless areas. And even the poorest villagers in Mexico have more than the poor of Congo. But drug money and diamond money and the criminal enterprises that control them have the same effect on a region. The author of Blood River remarked that the upper Congo basin may be, because of the collapse of anything resembling civilized society, the only place in the world where grandparents are more familiar with technology than their grandchildren, Rural Mexico is not there yet. But with every passing year of such a horrible social situation, hope will fade. With every mayor or other government official brutally murdered the chance of change becomes more remote. Legalization of drugs in the US and other countries would remove the financial footing of the drug network--that might be a good first step. But the armies of the drug lords will still be there and they will have to be dealt with regardless--psychopaths do not blend well into stable societies It seems like a pretty hopeless situation to me.