Luis Rubio
The bullets did not do the job. Hugs aren’t working either. Insecurity and violence increase and there is no reasonable diagnosis of the problem nor of how to solve it. A threat by President Trump was enough for those responsible of security to forget about the problem or its terrible consequences for citizens, ever more abused: government officials preferred to wrap themselves in the flag, ignoring even the very fact of the violence. Neither coarse nationalism nor the absence of a strategy will fix the problem.
It is imperative to separate two components of the issue: the American dimension and the violence itself: these are two perspectives that respond to different circumstances, although there may be links between the two. On the American side, the debate about the nature of Mexico’s problems has been going on for decades and has changed over time. For many years, after the Revolution, Americans watched as Mexico stabilized its economy and managed to settle a social and political peace. Then, with the beginning of the era of crises in 1976 and, above all, 1982, the debates there began to use terms such as the “failed state” when referring to Mexico. From the American perspective, the NAFTA negotiation at the beginning of the 1990s was a way to help Mexico for it to address its core problems and take a “great leap” towards development, once and for all.
Two decades later, the debate returned: Mexico did not turn NAFTA into a lever for its integral development; rather, its implementation did not go beyond the transformation of a part of its economy. As much as NAFTA has been extraordinarily successful in consolidating an export platform, it was evident in USs eyes (and for all those who wanted to see the reality) that Mexico had used the NAFTA as a mechanism for not altering the political order or affecting the interests close to the political class. It was in this context that ideas began to be debated on how to force Mexico to eradicate corruption and modify its political-bureaucratic structures. Those debates went nowhere, largely because, for the United States, the consequences of adopting an unsuccessful American strategy in Mexico could easily translate into a sudden mass emigration of Mexicans to their territory. In this sense, the natural propensity of Americans to be careful when acting on Mexican issues (even if this does not always appear obvious to Mexicans) has had the by-product of making it ever easier for Mexico’s most pernicious special interests to strengthen the status.
From the Mexican perspective, American concerns of Mexican corruption or violence can be seen as wrong, naive, ludicrous or interventionist, but that is no reason for Mexicans to pretend that there isn’t a major problem. Mexico suffers from a dysfunctional system of government, growing and intolerable violence and a world of corruption and impunity, all of which have the same origin: a political system designed by the winners of the revolutionary movement to prey and plunder. Instead of transforming itself to be effective in the 21st Century, the system has incorporated new members, while preserving its core objective: to privilege the powerful in the broadest sense of the term.
While the economy has undergone diverse changes and transformations, some very favorable and others not so much, the world of privileges and corruption remains. It was functional in the thirties of the last century, but it is no longer so, no matter how much the president wants to reinforce it with the renewed concentration of power that he’s advancing. Instead of building a new system of government, the country has been paralyzed in this area for almost a hundred years. Therein lies the origin of the current dysfunctionality and, therefore, of the government’s inability to end the violence.
It is in this context that evils such as those of impunity and corruption remain in place (both components inherent to the post-revolutionary system) and, more to the point, that the government is unable to face its undesirable consequences, such as violence.
It is clear that much of the violence is linked to the drug trafficking business that, at least in a significant proportion, originates in the United States. However, the fact that violence takes place in Mexico and not in our neighbors’ turf constitutes proof that the problem lies in our system of government, since the same phenomenon of drug trafficking in the US does not translate into violence.
The fact that Trump might declare drug gangs to be terrorist organizations would have all kinds of repercussions, but it will not solve the problem of violence in Mexico. Hence, instead of Mexicans wrapping themselves in the flag, it would be much more appropriate to carry out a profound and honest diagnosis of the nature of the problem so that, in such context, decide what should be done and, where warranted, to request the type of support from the US that could be relevant to Mexico.
The problem of violence will not be solved by Americans with legal changes or with drones because these do not attack the causes of the phenomenon. Mexico requires strategy to develop a new system of government capable of dealing with the challenge of violence before the US attempts to impose solutions that will not solve anything, but that could end up dismantling the little that does work well.
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