MEXICO: WHAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM?

Yesterday we learned the shocking news that Mexican gangsters murdered 72 Central and South American migrants near San Fernando, 85 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. The 58 men and 14 women had hoped to cross the Texas border into the United States. The victims, all of whom had been shot, were slaughtered by Mexico’s notorious Zeta Gang.

Mexico has long been plagued by deadly clashes between heavily armed drug cartels. Those clashes take thousands of lives every year. There are lots of kidnappings for ransom. Gangsters kill hundreds of political office holders, judges, police officials and news reporters. And there are many cops and other government officials on the payrolls of the cartels.
　
So what is behind these spate of killings and corruption? Mexican and American officials would have us believe that the trafficking in and use of illegal drugs are to blame. Mexican officials go even further than that by blaming the existence of the gangs, the attendant violence, and the corruption on the insatiable hunger of Americans for Marijuana, Heroin, Cocaine, Meth, and other illegal drugs.
　
A desperate President Felipe Calderon has suggested that Mexico should consider the legalization of drugs. When he made his proposal - The Economist (8-14-10) entitled it THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE - Felipe must have flipped out under the influence of some funny tobacco smoke. With the huge demand for recreational drugs by Mexico’s northern neighbor, the drug cartels are not going to go away just because the country legalized drugs.
　
Let’s suppose that both Mexico and the United States legalized drugs. Would that cause the demise of Mexican drug cartels? No way Jose! Remember that the end of Prohibition in the U.S. did not bring about the demise of the Mafia. The drug cartels, just like the Mafia, would simply find some other criminal enterprises by which they can enrich themselves. The gangs are not about to go away because drugs are not the real problem behind Mexico’s violence.
　
The real problem is the deep socioeconomic chasm that divides Mexican 'haves' and 'haves not.'. Our southern neighbor has a small number of extremely wealthy people and a small middle class. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans are dirt poor and live in abject poverty. Whenever any country has a divide between the poverty-stricken masses and a small well-off ruling class, it will have an insurgency – in Mexico it’s in the form of gangs and in other countries it’s Marxist militias.
　
So, until Mexico’s socioeconomic chasm is bridged, it will continue to be plagued by deadly gang warfare, corruption, kidnappings and by the killings of office holders, judges, police officials and news reporters. Drugs are not the real problem and Calderon is just a dumb Mexican who is not smart enough to realize that the legalization of drugs probably won’t make a peso’s worth of difference.