I seriously doubt you have an even rudimentary knowledge of our country. And perhaps that extends to any knowledge of developing countries and their problems. To blame these types of situations as complacency strikes me as a very typical answer from an American or citizen of another developed country.
Answer this question. Would the drug cartels exist if their product was legal?
And answer this. Why is the USA so fucked up its society needs to consume such large quantities of mind altering substances?
Many of us don’t, beyond an occasional beer. Don’t let television fool you - we still have a fair number of nondrinkers and a heck of a lot of nonsmokers of anything tobacco or pot.
Drug cartels would find some other illegal way to make money as they believe it is easier than doing it legally … so they would turn to prostitution, gambling, murder for hire, kidnapping and outright theft.
And you are quite right, blaming the whole mess on the complacency of Mexicans smacks of the same sort of racialism as all indians are drunks, and all blacks eat watermelon and are lazy … I apologize for my jerky countrymen but you do realize that the appearance of complacency is damning to many peoples eyes.
I know the tendency is to hunker down like a bunny rabbit and hope to be ignored so you and your family doesn’t get hurt, and there is nothing wrong with that, or trying to leave the country. I believe that the worst of the cartel based violence is actually in Mexico City, and in the belt of Mexico by the American border, and it actually doesn’t actually affect most of the rest of the population in Mexico so our perception of Mexico and her troubles is just as skewed as Mexico’s viewpoint of America. We are both to blame for our perceptions [and television programming as well]
OK, it’s fair enough to say that the US is a problem for Mexico because we are a huge market for pot and cocaine. But Mexico’s response to this “problem” has been because it has so many dirt poor people, and always has. Part of this is of course the notion that your kids are your social security check so have as many as you can, and of course Catholic attitudes and teachings about birth control. Now despite a population of poor people that grows right past sustainability when times are good, Mexico actually has very nice oil resources, but as has occurred in most Third World countries (and the US, come to think of it) the wealthy elite has snagged most of the oil money for themselves. (I understand that oil has been nationalized under Pemex, but somehow Pemex revenues dont seem to be translating into improved infrastructure throughout Mexico … see “corruption”).
The real problem with Mexico is that its wealthy elite does not understand that building up a robust middle class is the key to making Mexico and themselves wealthier, leaving ambitious poor people who might see a route upward in the middle class to turn to drugs, kidnappings (big industry in Mexico) and such to get wealthy. Many Mexicans will improve their lot through hard work if they can (by working at the maquiladoras along the border or by crossing the border into the US. It’s not for lack of desire, it’s for lack of opportunity that Mexico doesn’t have a middle class. And that’s because of the culture.
Sadly, America is trending Mexican. Our welathy elite is gathering more and more of the wealth of this country and turning it to their personal use. Two percent of our population own 90 percent of our wealth, while the middle class declines economically (wages have been stagnant for decades). The end result of this trend will be an America that looks a lot more like Mexico than it does Europe. Then we’ll be a problem for ourselves, too!
I am so sick of hearing about how all Mexico’s problems are due to the US. You can’t or won’t enforce your own laws, you encourage your citizens to break the laws of other countries (illegal immigration), you can’t manage to provide safe and clean water to your own people, and somehow, all this is our fault?
Despite that, somehow, you can spend $24 billion per year on your military… to defend yourselves against who? Guatemala? the US?
Yet, your people don’t get outraged at having judges and mayors killed, or the fact that they have to drink bottled water or else they’ll get sick. That’s the complacency I’m talking about. There doesn’t seem to be much outrage or much popular anger at either situation, and that’s complacency, plain and simple.
Take some fucking responsibility- regardless of whether there’s a demand for drugs north of the border, you should want to have the cartels out, and be outraged that they’re killing police chiefs and mayors, and bribing everyone else in sight.
If you would have bothered to investigate the birth rate for my country you wouldn’t have posted such an ignorant statement. For the record, the rate is almost identical to that of the USA.
I have 3 children. One is a lawyer, another has a degree in business and the third is studying civil engineering. I don’t expect any to be supporting us when we no longer work.
The simple fact is you have no idea what you are talking about. Your ignorance is truly amazing. Where do you come up with this bullshit? Do you just make it up or do you get it from some idiot’s blog?
How do you know what the people here feel about this? The truth is you don’t. Just plain ignorance.
So how many professional porn actresses would still do porn if they didn’t get paid?
The fact that you can make money if you take your clothes off for the camera means that there are more people who take their clothes off for the camera. If there’s no money, you get fewer girls who decide to do porn.
Or do you believe that, since there are plenty of girls who won’t do porn, those who currently do porn would inevitably end up working in the sex industry in some other capacity, if they couldn’t make money in porn? Like, since they’re natural sluts, if they couldn’t make money in porn they’d be picking up johns on the streetcorner?
Or maybe, there are decisions that cause some people to turn to making porn, while others don’t. And if you change the incentives, you change the number of people who choose to make porn. Some people won’t do porn because they’re too ugly. Some because they’re too old. Some because they think it’s immoral. Some because it doesn’t pay as well as that stockbroker job they have. Some because it would give their father a heart attack. Some because it objectifies women. Some because it isn’t safe. And so on.
So for every person in the world, there are usually many reasons why they choose not to do porn, and only a few reasons to choose to, and so this is why most people aren’t porn stars.
If tomorrow suddenly porn directors started offering ten times the money for porn actresses, do you think we’d have the same number of girls willing to do porn, or fewer, or more? We’d have more, right? And if tomorrow suddenly porn directors started offering 1/10th the money for porn actresses, would we have more, the same, or fewer?
People aren’t born sluts, or born criminals. Yes, they have inborn personality traits that might make certain jobs better fits. Some people just seem to be impulsive, or easily frustrated, or easily bored, or easily angered, or unafraid of risk. But take an impulsive risk-taking kid. Does he grow up to be a drug dealer? Well, if there’s no money in dealing drugs, what do you think is going to happen?
And of course, the other problem with drug-dealing generating mountains of money is that money is used to corrupt law enforcement. A violent petty thug who steals cars and snatches purses can’t give the cops a large enough bribe to let him go. The same violent thug who makes millions smuggling cocaine can.
Well, on review it turns out that Wikipedia’s wrong- it’s closer to 7 billion, not 24 billion.
That amount is still absurdly large for a nation with no bordering threats.
Regardless, your police and army can’t seem to enforce your laws, and there are very few reports of popular outrage or anger, but many articles about how people idolize the “narco saints” or sing narcocorridos, or other examples of popular acceptance of the drug cartels.
I don’t live in Mexico, but the press in other countries aren’t painting a very good picture of the Mexican people’s response to this.
So the consensus answer to the OP appears to be, Mexico is fucked up because it’s full of Mexicans. Everyone knows that Mexicans love violence, drugs and corruption, and so therefore Mexico’s problems are insoluble.
Look, the reason there’s corruption is because there is a lot of money to pay bribes with. The reason people shut their mouths is they don’t want to get shot. The reason people become drug dealers is because there’s a lot of money in drugs. The reason the army and the cops can’t make progress is because there’s so much money in drugs for bribes of officials and cops, payoffs to local people to shut up, and plenty of money for bullets for those who don’t take bribes.
Yes, there’s a culture of corruption, corruption thrives and feeds on itself. More corruptions leads to more corruption. It’s pretty obvious.
So is the answer that Mexicans are horrible people? Or is there some other solution that doesn’t involve replacing the entire country?
You said it had ended. So apparently it hasn’t had the success you claim
Mexicans are murdered and assaulted in your country daily. The guilty should be arrested and punished by the corresponding authorities.
It matters to those who live here. We aren’t willing to give the government those types of powers. As it is now, we already have to put up with the loss of certain dignities that you would be screaming about suffering.
Breaking my vow just in case nobody makes this point:
We do that, as best we are able.
The problem is that there is a perception, at least in the US, that that doesn’t happen in Mexico. That a cartel gang can kill, for example, an American Tourist, blatently in full daylight and nothing will be done about it. There is a perception that the Rule of Law in Mexico is badly badly broken, if not completely absent.
The military is heavily involved in fighting the cartels. And apart from that role our military is used extensively for helping during natural disasters. We spend less than 0.5% of our GDP on the military. Since we don’t spend our time invading other countries around the world, that is usually sufficient.
Very very few American tourists are killed like you mention. The aledged killers of employees of the US Consulate in Juarez have been arrested.
There are similar perceptions in our country about the US justice. A young Mexican was beaten to death a few years ago and the guilty young men were given but a very light sentence. The American football player that was guilty of dog fighting spent more time in jail.
Very few indeed. I am not arguing that monetary gain is not the primary motivation for doing crime, or doing porn: just that the sort of people who engage in either are obviously disposed to getting money that way, which at some point involves choice.
I would not equate pornography with prostitution ( if only because the girls are merely displaying, instead of selling, their most precious possession. ) And I doubt they are necessarily sluts. Prolly have exhibitionist tendencies though.
But whilst they might disdain prostitution, they would be more willing than other girls under the same pressures to seek wealth through dubious careers. Simply because people are individuals and in the spectrum of personality a section is more likely to take easy paths or paths that much of society dislikes than another section.
I should suspect that he would grow up to be a thug. Thugs don’t have to deal drugs: there are many avenues in crime, and not that long ago, call it the early 19th century, New York had few drugs, but a lot of thugs. We have always had violently disposed men who became thieves or muggers from Ancient Egypt onwards. Often poverty meant that was the only route to survival, but beyond having a sustainable life, continued and expanded criminal activity involves greed, and the willingness to commit abhorrent acts to maintain that. ( Most big mobsters in the 1930s could have retired at any time with enough to live a modest life until death: mostly they kept on truckin’ because they wanted more, and more, and more. As with present-day CEOs the amount of reward doesn’t just involve the mere material accumulation of wealth [ however nice that is ] but serves to advertise their moral worth and display success to those they consider losers. )
Anyway, bullies in school generally grow up to having bullying personalities in later life, and that needs outlet…
I’m merely arguing that a materialist motivation is insufficient and that if all the drugs in Mexico suddenly became valueless the cartels would immediately stop supplying if there was no profit, but that would not mean that every member would decide to become a hard-working, law-abiding, upstanding member of society. Such people will still be a problem — not because at the moment they are distributing illegal drugs, but because they have extensive personality problems.
Well, that’s more a problem of recruiting honorable, incorruptible officers. People are supposed to resist temptation and remain true.
I was told the other day that in London’s notorious Vice Squad during the '70s a new recruit had a wad of cash placed upon his desk the first day: if he took it, then he was in. If he refused he was transferred out. This would come down to the inefficiency and weakness of those at the top rather than even the turpitude of the bribe-takers themselves.
America’s inability to accept responsibility for what they’re at least partly to blame for (some will argue wholly) is what lets this kind of thing get out of hand. It’s the same ‘isolationalist’ mindset that the country is infamous for–that almost let the Nazis take Europe in its entirety–that could let Meixco turn into another Congo.
It’s all well and good invading places that have fossil fuels and strategic locations you want, or to hunt for fictitious kill weapons. But when it comes to cleaning up a mess in one’s own backyard, that’s where the US are left wanting.