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In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
- deevolution 5y agoStates are also cartels but we just call the overlords by different names (Police, Mayor, Military, etc). Both commit obscene amounts of violence. Just look at the military history of United States for instance.
- alex-wallish 5y agowhy do humans do this sort of thing?
- mrb 5y agoMoney.
- sergiotapia 5y agoblame drug addicted garbage that keep shoving that shit up their noses.
- happytoexplain 5y agoNot the murderers? Seems like your opinion is biased by hatred.
- gftttgggfffddd 5y agoI think drug users should be called out for supporting this violent industry similar to how drunk drivers, sexual harassers, and racists are social pariahs
- boterock 5y agoThe problem is more that people don't know all the problems that are causing when buying cocaine. In the end, if they're doing it at home without harming anyone, what's the issue? I would relate it more to how people eating meat are contributing to global warming without realizing it.
- the_only_law 5y agoOf course the standard exclusion will apply if you’re rich and powerful.
- spankyspangler 5y agoHorrible victim blaming. Only under neoleftism could addicted victims of these violent destructive drug pushing cartels be considered to be supporters of the cartels, and not the cartels or the people or governments of the countries they flourish under.
- jes 5y agoDrug addicted individuals are not garbage. They are human beings. I see them as worthy of compassion and a sincere helping hand, however it can be given.
- throw7 5y agoWould you take a life if one was taken from you?
- TimTheTinker 5y agoAn equivalent question is: why does human evil exist? Your answer will depend on your worldview -- your beliefs on matters like origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. If you're not sure, I'd suggest evaluating candidate worldviews with an eye toward comparing the extent to which their propositions correspond to reality and are internally consistent.
- edgyquant 5y agoIt’s not evil. These people don’t go to bed at night thinking they are the villain. The real answer is more depressing: people have to eat. These police are part of a system that is threatening the livelihood of cartels and with the exception of a few people at the top this livelihood is what feeds theirs families.
- iammisc 5y agoWhat? You can definitely find jobs to eat in Mexico. This is the silliest take. It's not like the villages suddenly don't have land to grow food on
- edgyquant 5y agoI mean, I didn’t say you couldn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that cartels are businesses and the reason for these terrible things aren’t because the people are evil but because it’s their livelihood. I’d also wager that working for a cartel pays a lot better than working on a farm in Mexico. It also isn’t a “take.” When you start throwing around words like evil you are demonizing the enemy which you should never do.
- TimTheTinker 5y agoIt's not so much demonizing someone as calling a spade a spade. These cartels are built on an explicit disregard of ethics and human rights. People in these organizations are encouraged to commit bloodshed against innocent people. To say that's not evil is a grave ethical miscategorization -- and those who fail to label evil accurately can't help stop its progression.
- smabie 5y agoBecause that's who we are.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y agoPart of what's going on in Mexico is that the cartels have spread romanticized images of themselves to the point where many Mexican youngsters actually aspire to cartel life. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcocorrido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcocorrido
- Buge 5y agoMusic promoting crime and kids aspiring to that life isn't a purely Cartel thing unfortunately. Gangster rap and drill music often promote crime.
- edgyquant 5y agoIndeed when El Chapo was arrested there were loads of memes going viral about how good he was to the poor. I do believe this is somewhat factual (not El Chapo but drug lords in general) but they tend to be equally or even more cruel to those who don’t bow to their whims.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y agoI would guess this reputation is based on a few high-profile charity cases optimized for maximum PR impact.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoThey are setting up legitimate business, and hiring whole towns. I can see why certain people turn their heads. There's part of me that went numb to other countries problems. America needs to help itself. I'm seeing more desperate, disenfranchised Americans than ever.
- asdff 5y agoFor some young people their only role models are terrible people who take advantage of their trust and get them into this life. It's a big issue in the U.S. too.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoWe didn’t become the dominant species on earth by playing nice with others.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jonnycomputer 5y agono, we became the dominant species on earth by playing nice with each other. though that kind of thing usually plays along in-group/out-group boundaries.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIf someone punches you in the nose, you(or someone you love) might want to punch them in the nose twice. Repeat x 100000000
- ilaksh 5y agoI think it comes down to economics. Countries are not islands. Poor countries and poor neighborhoods create a situation where people legitimatize criminal gangs. Many men may see that as the only way to gain any power. In a country with more money, more opportunities and a vietual police and military monopoly on force the situation is different. We have many, many prisons in America. But think about what it was like in the prohibition era. I would argue that the biggest difference was actually economic.
- edgyquant 5y agoNot even just power, I grew up in a fairly poor neighborhood (in the US) and most of my friends were pretty poor. The guys who sold weed or harder drugs had a lot more money to spend than those who worked legitimate jobs as teenagers. When you’re given the option of working a job that doesn’t respect you and then going to college so you can make a few thousand a month seven years from now or selling drugs and getting that plus respect now it isn’t hard to see why people choose the latter. And that’s in the US in the developing world the choice is more be poor and maybe work in agriculture, take a chance and moving far away and maybe finding a decent job or getting into a gang where you can take care of your family now.
- pjerem 5y agoHumans do this when they are extremely poor and must survive poverty by themselves and then, an organization (criminal, by the way) starts to take care of them. Care is materialized by revenue here, but imho, what is important is that those organizations won by giving those people a future the government failed to provide.
- ALittleLight 5y agoIf I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs. Setup compounds to securely house the police forces. Change the policy to "balazos, muchos balazos".
- haolez 5y agoThe politicians are probably much less powerful than the cartels (if they are not allies). To try to pass a bill to decriminalize all drugs would probably fail and get you killed.
- atatatat 5y agoMultiple Mexican Presidents in the last few decades have been shown to be CIA assets, so
- atatatat 5y agoSince HN downvotes before searching these days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16195392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16195392
- edgyquant 5y agoLegalizing it in Mexico isn’t a solution since they aren’t selling to Mexican citizens for most of their profit. America and Europe are large, developed economies with wealthy middle/upper classes who like to do coke. I’m sure crack cocaine makes up a decent chunk too but I can’t imagine that the poor that partake in that make up even close of the same percentage as the wealthy coke consumers.
- dvt 5y ago> If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Legalize murder? The problem is not only complex on a local scale (city or country), but there are geopolitical pressures at play as well. Cartels tend to be very populist, often funneling money back in their communities making them (paradoxically) better. On the other hand, you've also got offshore banks that protect cartels, laundering their money, just as they protect the likes of large tech companies stash their money in tax-free havens. If you want to change that whole machinery, be prepared to take on the world's billionaires.
- ttul 5y agoAt some point, Mexico ought to be considered a failed state…
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoI mean, sure, I guess it's not Sweden and "failed" is subjective. But Mexico is very, very far from being Syria or run by warlords.
- miked85 5y agoAgreed. Cartels run the country. The government is mostly corrupt and completely ineffective.
- fractallyte 5y agoThat could also be a description of its northern neighbor... Edit: admittedly, a rather loaded statement. There's a lot more complexity involved, but essentially, it's an analogous situation: corporations and cartels are dictating politics. This is corruption! (Perhaps it's too much to call it a "failed democracy", but it's certainly a "subverted democracy".) In the context of illegal drugs, Mexico would not be in this state without the US; and vice versa. Is it a parasitic or a symbiotic relationship...?
- josephcsible 5y agoThe US government may be ineffective in a lot of ways, but it's still very effective at maintaining a monopoly on the use of force.
- chirau 5y ago"Cartels run the country", quite a strong statement indeed but would we be in the same boat if I said, let's say, "Jews run America"? What would be your justification for your statement and counter for mine?
- pengaru 5y agoAsk yourself what country is responsible for the war on drugs fueling the black market funding the cartels.
- boterock 5y agoAbout that last sentence: "former U.S. Ambassador [...] said in April that López Obrador views the fight against drug cartels as a distraction ... So he has basically adopted an agenda of a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards them, which is pretty troubling to our government, obviously.” Not from Mexico, but from Colombia, where we also have a very hard time with drugs. The real problem with drugs has never been here. It is always because the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side, this way they push the war to this side. while they get to enjoy the benefits of unregulated markets. The true solution to the problem is regulated drug market, where the country people can make a profit out of it, and every link of the chain pays its due taxes. But cocaine is so big of a business that mafias aren't letting that happen. US doesn't even care about cocaine, otherwise they would be doing a far better job at eliminating the trafficking. It is just that if they're not the ones making a profit, then no one should make a profit. Typical case of a northern country exploiting a southern country.
- josephcsible 5y ago> the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side Isn't the typical complaint that the US does too much to fight drugs?
- boterock 5y agoMaybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.
- midev 5y ago> In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians This is not true in the US. We have no politicians that are suspected of being involved with cartels. While our policies might not help the situation, no politician is actually working with traffickers.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y agoI'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident went viral, it is actually a common occurrence in South Africa, and many gangs have ex-police and ex-military members. Unsurprisingly the police don't provide effective protection against these professionalized gangs, creating the need for private security guards like Prinsloo. In the US, we are used to thinking of "crime" as just another political issue. But observing countries like Mexico and South Africa, where gangs and police forces have started to merge, has helped me realize that there are important nonlinear effects. Once "crime" gets bad enough, the state begins to lose its monopoly on force, and I'm not sure it is possible to recover from that. I'm starting to understand why people in the Philippines might support politicians such as Rodrigo Duterte who disregard due process--at a certain point, it becomes more important for the state security forces to win than for them to play fair.
- andred14 5y agoHaha, so you think the government which has been robbing us blind at every turn needs to win? Taxation is robbery, I do not consent to my hard earned money being spent on experimental injections and wars.
- gonzo41 5y agoSo what you're observing is the process in which states originally asserted themselves as sovereign in the first place. Ie with a ton of violence. Say in ~20 years if those states failed, and Narco states were born out of them, eventually they'll establish a version of governance and im sure sure the cycle would continue.
- edgyquant 5y agoThere was an old (facetious) John Stewart bit where he said the cheapest way to defeat (iirc ISIS) was to not fight them at all but let them get bogged down in having to actually govern. Obviously ISIS is an extreme example but I do think this method could be applied in a way to cartels. I’m not up to date on the situation but I do know that Columbia officially ended its civil war in 2019 with the FARC becoming a political party.
- andred14 5y agoHere in Canada and in Australia and the UK the police are the real cartels.
- observr9 5y agoWill this trend lead to fewer and fewer people joining law enforcement, which would further weaken the government? Regarding whether this constitutes a "failed state", I'd say it depends on how bad this gets. Similar to the concept of "peaceful transfer of power", there also needs to be a relatively peaceful maintenance of power. Politicians, judges and law enforcement are the very people who constitute a functional government. If, going forward, a certain threshold of the "good guys" start to opt out of joining their own governing system (in one of those capacities) for fear of having themselves and their families murdered, then the country becomes a failed state. How can other countries prevent that from happening to them, especially Mexico's neighbors?
- coolspot 5y agoWhich kinda reminds me of “defund the police” and “ACAB” movements in the US, promoting that all cops are bad and no good person should join police force. I don’t think it does any good for future crime rates.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoWell, its a problem yeah. But its not a few bad apples. Police abuse people pretty systematically. Its no good having a police force that is basically unaccountable. Which is what we've got now. Also, police are called in to do things that really they shouldn't be, like resolving disputes between spouses, dealing with people having mental health issues, etc. And they carry guns all the time which just means that the chance of them using a gun in a casual encounter goes up massively.
- audunw 5y ago> Which kinda reminds me of “defund the police” and “ACAB” movements in the US, promoting that all cops are bad and no good person should join police force. This sounds like a huge mischaracterization of the movements to me. From what I've seen it seems the movement mainly has two goals: - Demilitarize the police, i.e. don't let them buy toys that are overpowered for the work they're supposed to do. - Don't make the police do tasks that are better handled by others. Like, don't put all the responsibility of dealing with mentally ill people. Move money from the police to various departments/institutes that can help and treat people with mental illness. > I don’t think it does any good for future crime rates. It's much worse to neglect mental health, to remove social security systems, and to let income inequality get out of hand. That's the point of "defund the police". Invest in policies that reduce the need for a militarized police, by treating the illness rather than spending money on dealing with the symptoms.
- totalZero 5y agoWhat are the arguments against two years of compulsory police (or naval) service for men at age 18 in Mexico? It would certainly alter the political dynamics of the war on drug cartels if moms nationwide were to send their sons to fight trafficking, and scooping young men out of their communities might prevent them from getting involved in criminal enterprises.
- ttz 5y ago> fight trafficking The message the cartel is sending to those who are trying to do exactly this seems like a strong deterrent. Not saying it's a bad idea. But there is ample evidence of police not being paid enough and accepting "bribes" (I use quotes here because I think the negative connotation is unfair, somewhat, when a lot of this happens simply because they don't make enough in the first place - it's a different moral worldview when you're trying to support your family), so I don't know if it would be easy to stop them from being "corrupted", or "paid off", especially if the service is compulsory. I think in general, the issue is super complicated, and if there were a simple panacea or idea, it would have been tried by now. I honestly don't know what can be done to stop the cartels with the amount of economic clout they have and how entrenched they are in all aspects of society. There's a great line in Narcos (apologies for using a show, but I really think it's a very applicable line); a colonel was asked what he needed to stop Escobar, and he said "Incorruptible men". Incorruptible men are very hard to come by. Incorruptible men who don't fear their families being slaughtered are probably even harder to come by.
- soldehierro 5y agoSexism, for one.
- asdff 5y agoThere are gang members in the U.S. who join the military to receive weapons training. It won't eliminate the problem. You will just see corrupt soldiers instead of corrupt police.
- rendall 5y ago> There are gang members in the U.S. who join the military to receive weapons training. 1) There are people everywhere who do all sorts of things. The nightly news is replete with one-off events presented as a worrying trend. Is it a thing to worry about? is the question. 2) What's worse than a gang member entering military service? A gang member not entering military service: a 4 year commitment to being told what to do by your betters, learning life skills like how to cooperate and follow instructions. Would a "gang member" go back to his old life after successfully navigating that? Depends on the gang I suppose, but not many I would imagine. 3) With compulsory service, everyone would have weapons training, criminals and non-criminals alike.
- narrator 5y agoThe problem with saying legalization will solve everything is the legal industries, such as avocados, are subject to extortion by the cartels. So if you legalized drugs you'd just have cartels extorting the legal drug makers and have the same amount of violence and gang activity. Some areas where the local militia has replaced the police now exist because the police are too demoralized, corrupt or scared to protect the industry in that area from extortion, so the industry creates its own security force by arming local citizens. This makes a case for the second amendment. If the police are too scared to protect you, why not let people without a criminal record have guns and form a militia? https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/18/avocado-police-tancitaro-mexico-law-drug-cartels https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/18/avocado-polic...
- blablablerg 5y agoNo one says it will solve everything, but taking cocaine trafficking away from them will hurt them in their pockets. There are only so much avocado entrepreneurs they can kidnap and extort. Legalizing alcohol again in the US didn't make organized crime disappear, but it did make them much weaker. It has been a success.
- splittingTimes 5y agoGood point. In that regard, i think the cartels have also latched on to the oil trade.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago> The problem with saying legalization will solve everything is the legal industries, such as avocados, are subject to extortion by the cartels. Assuming your country's police force is sufficiently independent, then the extortion will fail when the perpetrators are arrested. Technically yes, legalisation isn't the be all and end all, but then, what point is any law, if your justice system and law enforcement officers are thoroughly corrupt?
- vkou 5y agoWithout high-margin profits from drugs, cartels can't maintain the manpower and incredible level of violence necessary to extort avocado growers.
- ratsmack 5y ago>It is a type of direct attack on officers seldom seen outside of the most gang-plagued nations of Central America and poses the most direct challenge yet to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding violence and rejecting any war on the cartels. Why would the Mexican President not want to just get rid of the cartels?
- ceilingcorner 5y agoBecause they’ve been doing that, with not great results. This new guy got elected partially on this new approach.
- mannerheim 5y agoCould be working for the cartels.
- asdff 5y agoVery very senior officials in Mexican government get busted for corruption all the time. It would not surprise me if this president was bought. Most recently, the former minister of defence who runs the entire army, the war against the cartel, and reports directly to the president, was arrested by the DEA. https://www.lamag.com/article/mexican-military-arrest-lax/ https://www.lamag.com/article/mexican-military-arrest-lax/
- webinvest 5y agoIn the year President Andrés Manuel López won, 113 politicians and 43 candidates running for office were assassinated. That was about 2/3rds of all of the presidential candidates. This year, 34 Mexican presidential candidates have been murdered so far. Most people want to get rid of the cartels and every year, people try, but all of the Mexican presidential candidates that want to, get murdered by a Mexican cartel.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CryptoPunk 5y agoPeople in countries with strong rule of law who criticize the people of countries like Brazil and Philippines for electing brutal leaders whose forces carry-out extra-judicial killings don't understand that the alternative to that brutality, is not the rule of law.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- redis_mlc 5y agoThis has been reported in the US press for decades. Mexican cartels send a rep to your door, and ask you, "Silver or lead?" Also, it's also been reported if there's a "stable" government, it's been completely bought off - otherwise there wouldn't be stability. For example, when there's a dramatic prison break using a mile-long tunnel, officials had to be involved.
- the_70x 5y agoThe amount of money and power a cartel have is not even comparable with the police resources. And even if a local police would want to things with proper training and weapons, the cartels are still having influence at the state and federal level.
- splittingTimes 5y agoIs there any example in recent history, where a failed state managed to turn around and improve/start functioning properly? And if yes, how did they do it?
- 0xy 5y agoIf the US decriminalised cocaine and other illegal drugs you would immediately put the cartels in a stranglehold financially. Upon this, you can start going after their "legitimate" interests in legal businesses like resorts and manufacturing. Just like the US prohibition emboldened the Mob, drug prohibition emboldens the cartels. The Mob used to literally have shootouts with police in the street.
- webinvest 5y agoWhat work do you think these people would start doing to fill in the financial gap? I’d suspect worse crime if no alternatives exist.
- julienreszka 5y agoThe way it was done is that crime was nationalized. For example in the USSR, the NKVD secret police nearly exterminated the criminal underworld completely, put the remaining in forced labor camps (Gulags) and used them to repress the political prisoners. Crime became a state monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law
- Red_Tarsius 5y ago"Not a failed state" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_San_Fernando_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_San_Fernando_massacre >Mass murder of 193 people by Los Zetas drug cartel at La Joya ranch in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico in March 2011. Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were later killed and buried in 47 clandestine mass graves. >Reports mentioned that female kidnapping victims were raped and able-bodied male kidnapping victims were forced to fight to the death with other hostages, where they were given knives, hammers, machetes and clubs to find recruits who were willing to kill for their lives. In the blood sport, the survivor was recruited as a hitman for Los Zetas. Just another day in Mexico. The S. Fernando massacre is not to be confused with another mass kidnapping of students in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Iguala_mass_kidnapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Iguala_mass_kidnapping
- justnotworthit 5y ago> Just another day in Mexico. Comical exaggeration doesn't help your case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Mexico > Failed state According the the wikipedia article, the military took over the town and arrested 82 people, including the leaders and local police. If by failed state you mean Tamaulipas, sure. If you mean Mexico, you need to talk about degrees of failure.
- timka 5y agoDoes anyone remember what happened when the authorities tried to destroy favelas in Brazil? Criminals started eliminating police officers' families. That's the way it works. You don't touch them, they don't touch you. Anyone knows what happened when Russians eliminated their 'thieves in law' (criminal bosses)? Street crime overwhelmed that city. You can't live w/o counter-elite. There's a kind of balance, as always.