More than 170 attacks have been committed against politicians in the lead-up to the June elections. This violence has put campaigns under tension and is sowing doubts about governability in several regions. Specialists warn that the line between the Mexican state and organized crime is increasingly blurred
Electoral violence is going unchecked in Mexico. Noé Ramos Ferretiz, a candidate for the municipal presidency of Mante, a city in the state of Tamaulipas, was campaigning last Friday when he was stabbed several times. The politician, who is a member of the National Action Party (PAN), died in the middle of the event, to the shock of his supporters. Overwhelming images of blood-stained leaflets circulated afterwards.
The main suspect fled without a trace, in broad daylight. He would be arrested by the end of the weekend. Hours after the crime in Mante, the body of Alberto Antonio García, a mayoral candidate for the ruling party, MORENA, was found in the city of San José Independencia, in the state of Oaxaca. His wife, a councilor in the town of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, was released alive after being kidnapped for two days.
The murders of Ramos Ferretiz and Antonio García are the latest two cases to be registered during the 2024 electoral process. So far in this election cycle, 30 candidates have already been murdered, according to data from the think tank Laboratorio Electoral (“Electoral Laboratory”).
If Mexico and America used the same firepower on the cartels, that they do on the middle east, cartels would be a thing of the past.
We’ve tried that under previous administrations. Doesn’t work. Lending Mexico a hand is just playing whack-a-mole so long as the conditions for the cartels (including the massive corruption in government, police, and military) remain.
The best thing the US can do for Mexico is reduce demand for cartel products domestically.
Weeding out FARC and Shining Path actually did teach valuable lessons which habe been repeatedly reapplied successfully during modern counter-terrorism.
Both where heavily invested in organized crime but are nowadays toothless or non-existant due to coordinated goverment and civilian efforts.
The Best example might be “The Sons of Iraq” who helped to pacify Iraq quite well. The Coalition literally hired local people suffering most from extremists to fight the extremists and it worked like a charm. FARC and Shining Path were pushed into insignificance by roughly the same methods.
Yes, there were “revenge” killings by the “somewhat good guys” against the “really bad guys”. But in hindsight it was necessary to show the “really bad guys” that the tables had turned. As long as the overall violence decreases - deal with it.
Oh, by the way, did you know that the Mafia once was an organized military organization fighting for Sicilian independence? Over the last 200 years they slowly degraded into a bunch of sometimes wealthy oligarchic stock market fraudsters, but mostly pick pockets and low level fraudsters, at most bribing officials for construction jobs, if at all. 40 years ago they killed judges and police officers in the dozen. Nowadays they get beat up if they show up in Palermos shops and demanding the Pizzo (protection money). And the police stands by and collects the beaten gangster afterwards without minding the locals doing local justice. Works fine.
They don’t want to get rid of the cartels. The DEA has a vested interest in staying relevant, as it’s part of the whole law enforcement industrial complex. Hell, one of the deadliest cartels’ soldiers were previously trained by American special forces back in the day ( https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2010/11/3/us-trained-cartel-terrorises-mexico ). Guess who trained Taliban? You got it, the US. Who trained many of the guerrillas that would turn into tyrants in South America? Correctomondo, the US once again. We love to destabilize regions for corporate interests.
Who is “they”? Names, pls.
The problem is systemic. You kill one cartel, another one pops up. It’s because there’s a demand for their products. Get rid of the demand and you’ll dry up the supply. Do it in a smart way, not by destroying people’s lives which inevitably throws them back in the cartels’ hands.
I’m fine with new ones, less skilled, popping up till we kill the lot of them. It’s better than doing nothing and appeasing them.
And how would you implement such a thing? Sure, on the internet it sounds all nice and dandy, but we don’t live in lala land. How do you separate civilians from the cartel when most of these cartels exist in populated civilian areas? Do you want the military to go scorched earth on the civilian population or what? Or do you create a police state to deal with the fact that the state is too incompetent to give people actual opportunities so they don’t end up making drugs for a living?
How about you give people in Mexico proper financial opportunities so they don’t have to grow crops for drugs to feed themselves and their families? And on the other end, how about you deal with mass homelessness and poverty in the US so people don’t have to take drugs to cope with their situations? How about not incarcerating every single drug user, then throwing them on the streets after spending 5 years in prison around actual criminals, and then wondering why they go straight up back to using drugs?
These “opinions” are just armchair expert discussions. If it was that easy to deal with this shit, it would’ve been solved a long time ago.
I can assure you that there are regions within the European Union where people are even less poor and not trying anything criminal to get rich. I’m referring to parts of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and southern Italy.
Not to mention Third-Party-Members like Albania, Moldovia, Bosnia or Macedonia who are partially Third-World-Nations.
You won’t find poppy plants there. And while there is some organized crime - surely more than north of these countries - they are more or less under control and operate in the shadows.
But then the EU is also relaxed about giving work visas. Lots of people from those nations do some seasonal work within the EU, earning good money. We have all sorts of Ukrainians, Albaniens and even Tunesiens around Germany doing such jobs. Usually they earn enough money within two years to return home and start a family and a business.
I’m Romanian. I’ve also been to Mexico. I highly suspect that you have no clue what you’re talking about. The poverty in Mexico is a lot worse than in any part of Romania. Besides that, being poor in Romania means getting a job 50km away from your village, in the next city at most. Jobs are fairly easily accessible.
Are you also aware that Albania has the most drug traffickers in Europe? They import pretty much all the heroin here.
If you are living in Romania you might also remember how life was there 20-50 years ago. The stories my buddy told me about his time over there are… wow. The story how his Grandpa as a major of a small village during communism stole enough money from the communist party until he could bribe his way to the West - and actually nobody minded him stealing like 90% of all money going to his village… In the late 1990ths my buddy was robbed at gun point twice. By Highway-Police. When he invited his Uncle to a good restaurant in the capital the simple farmer didn’t dare to step through the door because “I am not worthy”… Nowadays… it is a lot more relaxed. Not perfect but the really big shit is gone. Still he thinks most Romanian youngsters are kinda crazy but most Europeans are, just in a different way. And the tourist regions are actually quite nice.
The Albanian Government ist pretty well aware of their lack of control and gave full control over shipping lanes to FRONTEX around ten years ago.
That by the way is the main reason nowadays drugs mostly arrive in Rotterdam again. Easier to hide between millions of metric tons of cargo than in a single fishing boat.
Gun point robberies are no longer a thing in Romania nowadays. Do you think we drone striked those that did that or do you think that by giving people better opportunities they just stopped doing that shit?
Besides that, I think life was okay back during communism if you lived in the city. People had jobs, crime was low. Most crime came after the revolution after the entire country was deindustrialized and people had no opportunities left to make a living.
My buddy said the police really laid Ambushes for the corrupt cops and the arrests sometimes escalated. So, well, they didn’t got struck down by a drone but they really were at risk of getting taken out by 5.54mm bullets. Sure not everyone was corrupt and violent but still quite a lot.
If you say violent crime was low I am gonna believe that. Corruption and theft though were everywhere in the Eastern Block really bad, I know it myself from my visits in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and the simple casualness everybody took possession of government property was insane. A fellow of my uncle build his whole house in East Germany with stuff people he stole from the communist government. It was straight forward insane. Violence on the other hand was rather low and mostly because the cops were not shy about getting very violent you up just because they could. I remember when two border guards beat up a class mate in Berlin in 1989 because he had long hair. He stood in a queue waiting for being checked, the two border guards walked by, grabbed him, punched him a couple of times and send him back into the queue. My whole class was starring like “WTF what just happened”…
I know at least two Soviet/Russian Vehicles in my Munich neighbourhood straight forward stolen from the Soviets/Russia. One 60 year old Ural Truck which an East German buddy used to flee from Iraq in the 1980th to West Germany, another also pretty old GAZ used by a team of Russian soldiers fleeing from Ukraine through Turkey to Munich last Year.
While I once have been in Communist Romania it was during a holiday when I was eight and in a fenced hotel area. I can only remember it was kinda boring because no kids of my age were around. I should definitely visit the place again when I do my Europe tour after retiring, I guess it changed a lot.