Rejecting a renewed “war” against drug traffickers, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday unveiled her strategy to battle organized crime in a nation where each day brings word of new assassinations, gang wars, massacres and other bloodshed.
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Instead, she outlined a four-point strategy that emphasized intelligence-gathering, troop deployment, improved federal-state coordination and providing opportunities to dissuade impoverished young people from joining organized crime — which is among Mexico’s major employers.
A centerpiece of the plan is doubling down on the often-criticized “hugs not bullets” strategy of Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
How does a country get this under control? If you assemble a crack team of professional Intel/gunfighters/breaching team, all the gang leaders will do is target their families or other things around them. In a firefight, they outnumber your team thousands to one. You can’t assemble a large fighting force (standing army) without them knowing and stopping you/ infiltrating ranks. You can’t ask another nation to help - you run into basically us/Soviet’s in Afghanistan where they’re seen as occupiers, and generate resentment among even your supporters.
I understand the change probably has to come from within, but how does a government convince the lowest common person to not fall under the organized crime’s strong influence to keep people in line?
Build the economy and fund education and social programs. Fight corruption hard.
Its not glamorous or exciting but its what works in the long run.
Why do people turn to crime? Maybe a few idolize Pablo Escobar and the like, but the vast majority are trying to get by, feed their families and bring their kids through school. If legal work has you slaving away for a pittance that won’t even feed your family and corrupt governments take away money meant for the betterment of the community you start to see why some people stop caring or see illicit means as their only way out of poverty.
Education. An educated populace means a skilled workforce, which leads to better paying jobs and a chance out of poverty. I don’t think the choice between a good paying job in an international pharmaceutical company and a dangerous drug lab is a difficult one when you have legitimate options on the table.
I guess crime exists due to two reasons:
- poverty exists. as long as poverty exists, people seek a way out.
- organized crime exists. it draws people in.
So, pacifying the country needs a two-sided approach. On the one side, you must show people how to live a good life without being reliant on crime for basic necessities. People must be able to support themselves without falling back on criminal organizations.
On the other hand, probably the bigger issue, is that these crime organizations have a lot of money, and demand for labour-force. that means that they actively recruit new people, and draw people in. organized crime mostly exists because there’s too much money being made on the black market by selling/trafficking drugs. So I guess that it would make sense to legalize drugs (at least to a certain extent), because every $1 spent legally when buying drugs is a $1 you take away from the black market, and therefore crime organizations.
I think the key is to tackle the incentives that brought narcos into existence in the first place. Unfortunately, a lot of that is outside of Mexico’s control. As long as there is demand in the US and drugs remain criminalized, impoverished people in Mexico will be attracted to the drug trade. Also lax US gun laws make it easy for weapons to flow to the narcos making them a tougher target.
At the end of the day this is a counter insurgency fight. Violence needs to be limited to only the absolute necessary because it’s about ideas. And if you kill someone’s brother they aren’t going to stop to ask what their brother was doing. Or worse, when civilians are caught in the crossfire.
You still need the crack raid teams and such but your goal is to make the insurgents unable to function by removing key people, shutting down income streams so they can’t pay a thousand fighters, and taking their ideological ground away by making other paths available. Like you could go hide in the desert and risk your life and freedom. Or you could go work in the new air conditioned car parts factory.
Once you’ve got all that setup it’s really just a matter of protecting it and going after corruption in a big way. That last part is where so many governments fall down in this kind of a fight. The corruption goes unchecked and the insurgents get all of their moral high ground back with funding secured by the new infrastructure you paid for.
