It's starting to look like Mexico is falling apart

Hey, let's hear it directly from another Mexican too!

The state-party regime was a compromise to pacify Mexico after the Revolution of 1910. Using today's language, every stakeholder in the country had a place and a say in the system. This didn't happen when all of the generals got together one day and decided that this was a good idea. Instead, it played out for two decades, and in some cases, even beyond that.

One could say many things about Mexico, but its leadership during the 50s and 60s did invest in infrastructure and education, turning a nation where the vast majority were illiterate after the revolution and creating a public education system from kindergarden to university (now, the quality is another issue, but considering the beginnings, this was an impressive change.)

The Mexican government was even successful in cutting down the birth rate. Unfortunately, the population was already so high by the time that the birth rate was reduced (in the 80s), that you still had a wave of young people coming to age with no prospects for jobs.

The drug trafficking problems were well under way in the 80s, probably starting back in the 70s when the drug use in the U.S. began to rise. By the 80s, there were already turf wars.

But the real problem with Mexico has been an ongoing declining economy since 1982. There hasn't been any real recovery for the mass of the population. This was the result of economic crisis that got tied together with massive concentration of wealth. That, more than anything, has been the cause of social breakdown in Mexico.

Mexico does create a massive amount of wealth. The problem is that it is not distributed justly. And the social problems are a result of that. And there is no easy solution on how to redistribute it, and those with it don't want to share it.

After all, the elites get the mobs that they deserve.

Actually, the other day I was talking to a Mexican guy about this very issue.
He said that Mexico 30 or 40 years ago was not at all the dangerous place that it is today.

He summarised the problem to the following:
- a very high birth rate (although decreasing now), which gave rise to a fast population growth, much faster than the economy could provide new jobs.
- the one-party-state of the PRI that dominated the country for 70 years. As with any political party, when it stays in power for a long time, it gets corrupted. If PRI had been in power for 70 years, its corruption must have been exaggerated!
- even with the oil boom of the previous decades, the government and businessmen did little to invest the surplus capital in improving the nation's infrastructure, education level, and basic living standards. This lack of public investment, combined with the fast-growing population (especially in the lower classes), gave rise to a large underclass and a growing disparity between rich and poor.

Last and most important of all: the main problem is "DRUG TRAFFICKING".
Since the 90s, the clan wars over the control of the drug market has generated a large number of unsolved murder cases, and the police did not have enough resources to investigate all these murders and illegal activities.
As a consequence, most petty crimes went unpunished because the police has little time or power to deal with them. By knowing that anyone could get away with commiting any crime; the petty criminals broke loose on the streets: commiting robberies, kidnappings, thefts et.

For example, many of the "sexual perverts" who rape, torture, and kill prostitutes the Ciudad Juarez are foreigners who settled there just because they know they can get away with it.

THE RISE IN ORGANIZED CRIME ACTIVITY GENERATED AN INCREASE IN DISORGANIZED CRIME.

My Mexican friend said that the only ones to blame for the problems in his country are the Mexicans themselves. They are a country of rich natural resources, an exotic cultural heritage giving them huge potential for developing a booming tourist industry like in Spain, and a hard-working populace...
If the government and businessmen had invested wisely the money they earned through the oil boom to forment the growth of a middle class, things could have turned out very differently.

Originally posted by hugoestr You missed the point of what I said: gun control does prevent deaths.

The top 10 states in the U.S. with the lowest crime rates are all states where you can carry a concealed weapon. Actually you can carry a concealed weapon in 40 states, and these states don't have higher rates of crime than the other 10 states. On the other hand, the states with strict gun regulations (California, New York, Illinois, Washington DC, etc.) are consistently among the leaders in crime per capita, especially violent crime. Also, you're completely ignoring the fact that firearms prevent a countless number of crimes per year, as eaglecap mentioned.

This is the big gun fallacy: correlating safety with guns. The high Southern crime rate disproves this. If guns were the same as safety, the American South should be one of safest places on the country. The South is overrepresented in incidents of gun violence.

The states with low gun violence happen to be those where the culture stresses self-control; in other words, the Northern states of the U.S. and the Midwest. And as I said, I believe that the gun ownership in Canada is pretty hight and crime is pretty low. To be more cynical about this, Canada and the Northern U.S. states would have low crimes regardless of the existence of guns or not.

Originally posted by hugoestr And having Mexicans own guns is a bad idea. At one point, back in the 60s, Mexico was one of the top 10 countries with the highest rates of gun murders. Once guns became practically banned, the murder rate went down quickly. Why was this? Because Mexico has a honor culture, similar to the American South. If people live in a cool-headed culture, such as New England or Canada, you can have most of the population armed and the murder rates can stay low. But if you have hot-honor culture, and you have to fight any perceived insult to your honor, adding guns to the mix makes things a lot worse. Specifically, take guns out of honor cultures, and you end up with a lot of fights. Give them guns and you end up with a lot of murders. If we assume you're right, you're just proving my point that guns are not the problem--- people with bad intentions are the problem. Someone with bad intentions will not be stopped by the word of law, but he will be stopped if you point a gun at him and make him think twice. And you're assuming that if guns are illegal, people won't kill each other with guns. Well, murder has always been illegal, but that hasn't stopped any murderers now, has it? And when they prohibited alcohol, it didn't lead to any decrease in consumption. In short, the word of law won't stop a criminal. The threat of deadly force will.

You missed the point of what I said: gun control does prevent deaths. Mexico is the proof that gun control at a national level can lower the rate of murder by fire weapons, especially in places with honor cultures. This means that if tomorrow guns were outlawed in the U.S., the rate of murder in the U.S. South would go down dramatically.

I know I will get in trouble for saying this, but guns are the cowards' weapon. People who are okay shooting at other people at a distance would think twice before trying to assault someone face to face.

And most gun violence occurs between known people, not against an intruder. People get angry at their friends, spouses or relatives, get the gun and shoot at them. This is the scenario of most murders in the U.S.; this was the scenario of most murders in Mexico before guns became unavailable.

Originally posted by hugoestr For every one else the situation in Mexico is not a hard one to figure out: if the U.S. had sane gun laws, you know, where criminals wouldn't be able to easily buy guns, then drug lords from Mexico wouldn't have the arsenals that they have. First of all, the drug lords don't use legal models, they use banned military-grade weapons (unless you want to argue that I can legally buy grenade launchers and automatic rifles). And again, criminals don't get their guns legally from gun stores, because you could trace every bullet shell back to the owner via individual serial numbers and bullet 'fingerprints' which are engraved when the bullet travels through the shaft of the gun, and this 'fingerprint' is unique for every single firearm. Even small-time criminals are not dumb enough to use a registered weapon for a crime. This is why almost all guns used in crimes are not bought legally, but bought off the black market, which can be done whether or not guns are legal. Thus, gun control only prevents law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves.

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Once again, back to the fairy tale that guns are protecting people from intruders.   First, those scenarios are rare, very rare. So rare that the NRA has to collect those stories and publish them. How do I know?Because I took an NRA course and got their literature :)

Second, you are forgetting the big gun show loopholes. Legally, the nut case that shot people in Virginia Tech wasn't allowed to buy any guns. If I remember correctly, his name was in the database of people who shouldn't get guns. Yet he was able to legally buy them at a gun show.

And what would it worry to Mexican drug lords if there is a bullet signature with legal guns? Practically 100% of their use of the weapons will happen in Mexico.

And Semi automatic assault weapons, I believe, are legal in the U.S. Bush lifted the ban on them when he was president. And the news of how many people were buying them before a possible new ban made it to the post.


Now, don't think that I want to ban guns; I understand that this is a political impossibility in the U.S. Besides, as you pointed out, there are many states that can have a lot of gun with responsible use, so I don't see why they should be punished because others can't handle them correctly.

I would like to see some sane regulation on them. And gun aficionados should be the strongest proponents of them. Right now it is harder for me to buy sudafed or a test tube than it is for me to buy a semi automatic weapon. Let me repeat this again, it is easier to buy a semi automatic assault weapon in the US than to buy cold medicine or a test tube. This is insane.

We need the Untouchables!!

Hello to you all

I agree for the legalization of drugs, nonetheless, it should be pointed out that

1. Unlike tobacco and to some extent alcohol and weed, many drugs do not allow you to be socially and professionally functional.

2. Drugs are particularly plastic; in other words, you can't allow every and any drug, of course a (much more limited) for the drugs that will still be banned. But the fact is that if weed, cocaine and x alone were legal, drug trade would be considerably less important already.

3. Drugs by definition create a legal problems: by definition someone on drug is not responsible. I'm not talking weed here, but can you for instance prosecute for murder a guy who at the time though he was a walking and dancing bannana or something?

4. Some drugs to fuel crime by essence. It is particularly the case of those with a mix of high price, high addiction and low functionality left to the user. Basically, how else than by stealing  will one fund his habit?

But even bearing that in mind, I think making (some) drugs legal, even heroin, is a good thing. Indeed, however terrible some one the consequences of legalization may be, the consequences of prohibition are worse every time. If anything in budgetary terms. If anything, I don't see how legalization could turn entire regions into warzones!

Originally posted by pinguin With tabacco a person only kill itself. In the case of drugs and alcohol they are directly the cause of the killing of million of people worldwide, in murders, car accidents, intoxications, etc.

So you'd agree with making alcohol an illegal drug as well?

Originally posted by Al Jassas Second point, the overwhelming majority of ordinary crimes have a direct link to drugs and stats prove that. If this is not enough to accept as a legitimate reason for why drugs should be outlawed then what is the accepted reason? Drugs bankroll dictators, organized crime, human trafficking and many other hineous crimes that affect many times as much people as those who are now in the cross fire.

Drugs cause other crimes exactly because they are illegal. It's not as if there is something inherent about drugs that makes everything that's involved with it linked to crime. Just look at the prohibition in the United States: only when alcohol was banned alcohol and crime got unto an unholy relationship.

Just for fun perhaps they should try to ban chocolate. I'm sure that you'd have chococartels going on a rampage in Mexico and Guatemala within a few years. Organized crime has little to do with the character of the product, but rather with the fact that it's illegal.

Plus drugs are nothing like smoking or alcohol. Drugs affect a much wider range of people negatively than those two. One can control his tobacco or drinking habits easily but the same cannot be said about drugs. Drugs are highly addictive and rarely you will find a person who managed his drug habits.

A survey at my previous university showed that 75% of all students had used drugs at least once. Nevertheless I've never seen one drug addict at all at the uni. And that goes for the entire country, drug use is a lot higher than in other countries but drug addiction - which is which you want to combat - is not.

Another major benefit is that with legal drugs you can have the government check the quality, to make sure they don't contain poisonous material or things that make them more dangerous. Plus it means you can tax them, so instead of being a resource drain the government will actually make money from it (which could for example be spent at combatting drug addiction).

Originally posted by ArmenianSurvival Originally posted by Mixcoatl I'd say just legalize everything. It's better having a few people ruin their own lives than turning Mexico (and the rest of Latin America) into a warzone.   I have to agree. Instead of letting people make the choice of destroying their own lives, we're waging a war which affects millions of people who have nothing to do with drugs, all for the sake of saving a few junkies. This obsession with anti-drug sentiments has turned shooting up needles by junkies into shooting up the entire continent with automatic rifles. Thats what happens when you criminalize addiction.   If a fraction of the money spent on these wars went to drug treatment, we would be a lot better off.

I'm starting too wonder about that myself. People are going too use no matter what the cost in wealth or lives lost. If drug users are so willing too pay top dollar for the substance of their own destruction, at the expense of annoying the hell out of billions of peoples and their respective governments, then why not legalize them and then slap a horrendously ridiculous sin-tax on the individual user, while they are enjoying their own destruction? As far as the manufacturer's are concerned, they might become respectable business men in their own right, but a healthy tax (Say 25-50% of earnings) with no loopholes what-so-ever for their companies to wiggle out of might be the right way to go in making them pay for all the damage they have done to countless lives lost and ruined, and with the many destruction of past failed states over centuries just so a person can get a high! WTF...

This is all specualtion of course and it seems my views on this are currently in a state of flux. But, i do know this much for sure, i would rather we not be having this conversation in the first place!

Originally posted by Mixcoatl You can't compare using drugs with murdering people or having sex with children. If you murder people or have sex with children you're making victims, if you're using drugs the only person that will get hurt is yourself. We allow use of alcohol and tobacco, so it makes no sense to ban other drugs.