The
long bubbling cauldron of Mexican narco-politics has begun to boil over in
recent weeks. A buss full of university age students was sprayed with
machinegun fire by a combination of local "police" and cartel gunmen.
Forty-three surviving students were thrown into government vans and have since
disappeared. The Mexican peoples' tolerance for corruption may have reached its
limit. This incident is merely the latest, and most overtly egregious, in a
long line of murders at the intersection of drugs and politics in Mexico. The various
drug cartels have infiltrated the governments of their respective territories so
deeply that cooperation is much more a rule then an exception. The control exerted
by the cartels results from their uncompromising brutality. Opponents' families
are routinely targeted, rather than the opponents themselves, so they cannot
earn the title of martyr by dying at the hands of the cartels. The cartels employ
the stick and the carrot simultaneously with the phrase "plata o plomo."
This phrase, meaning silver or lead, gives an opponent the opportunity to
either take a bribe or get shot. Aside from its alliterative flare and
intimidation factor, the plata o plomo policy ensures that any politician powerful
enough to damage the cartels will be prevented from doing so by the money in
their pockets. A professors union is calling for what amounts to a strike if
the students are not returned alive. The historical pattern makes it a near
certainty that the students are already long dead.
The citizens of Mexico are in a
truly heartbreaking situation. Every trade in Mexico could strike, legitimate
life in Mexico would come to a standstill, and the cartels would still keep operating.
They have the necessary monetary and political resources to weather any foreseeable
cessation in public services brought on by civil disobedience. Military force
has already proven ineffective. The death toll in the previous president's War
on Drugs is estimated at around 120,000, and the cartels are still in de facto
control of much of Mexico. The Mexican government has broken one of the fundamental
rules of governance. For a government to be effective it must have a monopoly
on the legitimate use of violence. Cartel violence is not legitimate; perhaps
the word legitimate should be
replaced with the word effective. The
Mexican government has lost the monopoly on the effective use of violence. The problem
facing legitimate forces in Mexico is one of resources. Mexico may have
nation-state level resources, but many of these resources are dedicated to
running a country. The cartels, on the other hand do not have to deal with the
financial burdens of governance, and they have a near monopoly on the most lucrative
market in the world for their product.
It is uncertain how Mexicans will be
able to shake the grip of the cartels. The advantage they have is that they are
willing to exploit human flaws. If every customer were to willingly stop buying
illicit drugs at once, the cartels would lose money in a period of restructuring
and reemerge to cater to another vice. The only solution I can see is some
brand of popular uprising against the narcos, but this would involve mob
violence and mass execution, because that is how popular uprisings work, and
that might lead to a state of affairs just as dangerous for the average Mexican
as the current one.
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