“He’s been depressed. All of sudden he can’t do anything.”
“Why are you depressed, Albanito?”
“Tell Dr. Parpadeo! It’s something he read.”
“Something you read, huh?”
“The Mexican state is failing.”
“The Mexican state is failing?”
“Well, the state orders everything, and if the state is failing, then one day it will break apart, and that will be the end of everything.”
“What is that your business! He stopped doing his homework!”
“What’s the point?”
“What has the state got to do with it! You’re here in Iztapalapa! Iztapalapa is not failing!”
Seriously, people, the Mexican state is not failing. The Mexican state is weak compared to the United States or Canada. But it is incredibly strong compared to the places in Africa or Central Asia that are generally called failing states. Garbage is picked up. (In more places than Afghanistan, anyway.) Uniformed children go to school. Middle-class families take weekend getaways, and do so on motorways better than the ones north of the Río Bravo, with no fear of IED attacks.
Let's put some numbers on this. In 1997, the Mexican federation had a murder rate that made it, in per capita terms, about as dangerous as Puerto Rico is today. Over time, that fell, so that by last year Mexico's homicide rate had fallen within striking distance (or statistical error) of Maryland's. In 2008, murders appear to have spiked by at least a quarter ... making the country almost-but-not-quite as bad for your health as ... Louisiana.
Crime is the major problem in Mexico; its government's failure to control it is a blight, and Mexican voters should judge their leaders accordingly. Kidnappings, express or otherwise, should not regularly occur in a country with a halfway professional investigatory service. In the seven ... practically speaking, eight ... years that I lived in Mexico City both my downstairs neighbor and my best friend suffered carjackings, I lost the entire front end of my 1990 Mercury Cougar when I left it unattended for 15 minutes on a highway access road, and I myself got mugged by cops in Tlalpan.
That's a lot of crime. In comparative terms, I managed to traipse around East Harlem, Prospect Heights, Washington Heights, Manhattan Valley, the Lower East Side, and the South Bronx during the 1980s with less experience of mayhem. (Although I never actually saw any dead bodies in Mexico City, as opposed to three during my youth in Brooklyn and Manhattan. And no one ever attacked me with a knife on a metro train in el D.F. for no apparent reason. Nor was my house ever broken into and ransacked. But the point holds. Crime is worse in Mexico City than NYC in the bad old days. I think.)
In other words, crime is the major problem in Mexico. And it doesn't help that the cartels have made steps in turning themselves into a Mexican version of the Camorra in states like Sinaloa, or that displaced cartel hitmen have started opportunistically engaging in small-town crime.
But the Mexican state is not failing. Mexico is not failing. Iztapalapa is not failing. Iztapalapa (and Mexico) has problems, but it is not failing, and little Albano better do his homework.
Well, I'm really glad to read your prognosis. But I have a question for you--at present, the trend in Mexican public order and strength of the state vis-a-vis the cartels seems to be a downward one. Is there any sign of it hitting bottom?
Posted by: Andrew R. | January 21, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Couldnt agree more, this is really a no-brainer. It's weird how this has been a serious problem for a few years now, but it's spilling over into the American media and in comments from the government all at once. I don't know what to make of the mad rush of attention.
Posted by: Patrick | January 23, 2009 at 01:56 PM
I have one hypothesis, which is that the situation in Ciudad Juarez has deteriorated fast, and Juarez (along with Tijuana) plays an outside roll in American perceptions.
Sound plausible? I really don't know.
Posted by: Noel Maurer | January 24, 2009 at 12:09 AM