So you're forced to join a gang and fight their rival gangs, or you form your own gang equipped with rifles and grenades ready to commit violence, so that you can fight against joining that gang, or any other gang. Either way you're in a violent gang.
I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.
The US government is split into three branches with separation of powers. The executive branch does not have the authority to give orders which bypass laws and the constitution. Any agency that follows such orders has gone rogue, as following illegal orders is the definition of that.
But further, perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of just violence (just as in "justice") only to the state.
I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
> But further, perhaps our sense of morality atrophies when we concede the idea of just violence (just as in "justice") only to the state.
> I presume those fighting the cartels might have more of a developed sense of civic pride and duty than anyone in a more stable place. Perhaps I'm wrong though
100%. You can either become familiar with violence and temper it, or you are simply subject to violence by anyone that wishes it upon you.
For most of the Western world we grow up as "house cats", but that isn't the case in much of the world.
The Founding Fathers would have rejected that premise. They designed the American system in deliberate opposition to the idea of an unchallengeable state monopoly on legitimate force.
The state monopoly on violence (+ a judicial system) tends to result in a low amount of violence... at least intra-state. Wars are another matter. Notably, there is no monopoly on violence between states. States are allowed and somewhat expected to be violent psychopaths externally.
Internally as well, given what happens to any push back against law enforcement where I live- in the US, at least, if you try to defend yourself against state violence you'll be summarily executed in the street.
The conflict isn't because of the lack of monopoly. The conflict and lack of monopoly are because whoever as the closest thing to a monopoly is doing such a bad job.
Reminds me of when ISIS was at its peak a few years ago and the BBC and all other news in the UK would always prefix it with “the so-called Islamic State”.
Like… no, it was a state. It had borders, it had a monopoly on violence within those borders, it collected taxes, it provided some public services.
Whether it offended the BBC’s sensibilities or not, it was a state
The international community does not merely use dictionary definitions. If the government of the UK, in consensus with other neighbors and member states, cannot or chooses not to recognize sovereignty of some entity, then “so-called” is the best they can do.
Unfortunately this gives commoners tunnel-vision, because yes: if there are entities in Mexico that have qualities like nation-states, and even function more like this than the constitutional government, the media and the diplomatic corps are prevented from promoting the dictionary definition of “state” to apply it to unrecognized entities.
As siblings point out, when the corruption and gang activity is more or less integrated into state apparatus, they are overlapping in function and identity, and so a “shadow state” status emerges with unelected leaders, unwritten laws, and street justice.
You are completely correct. As much as many people don´t want to hear it, Mexico is a failing state. It´s extremely obvious when you are there that the United Mexican States lost most of the reins some time ago.
It started with the debt crisis, and its causes, but was definitively realized by 1994 when the Zapatistas took much of Chiapas.
Too much emphasis is put on the drug cartels alone, when the problem is much larger. I suspect by the end of the century maps will no longer show Mexico in its current form.
They are not states, but a tool of regional political groups. They do the illegal things politicians in power avoid if they want to maintain the facade. They don't have the monopoly of violence, they're intentionally allowed to act without serious retaliation.
Idk. I'd probably put it the other way - part of the state turned into gangs.
Most of the core leadership of major cartels who haven't been arrested were mid-level officers in the DFS (Mexico's version of Italy's SID and Turkey's MIT from Operation Gladio days).
And what is interesting isn't the narcos who are arrested and indicted by the DoJ, but those who are arrested and then let go.
The story of Salvador Cienfuegos is a good example of that - arrested by the DEA on drug charges that were sealed while being Defense Minister, but charges were dropped for diplomatic reasons [0] or the DEA's investigation into AMLO in the 2000s and 2010s that was eventually dropped [1]. Meanwhile, giants like El Chapo or El Viceroy were successfully extradited or in the case of El Mencho killed.
To me, it feels like "untouchables" like Cienfuegos, Adán Augusto López, and Marcelo Ebrard or established networks even above them are likely running the show.
Sort of like how the KGB broke bad in the 90s or the Turkish military in the 1980s-2000s or the KCIA before Korea democratized in the 1990s or how leaders in the vice industry in Thailand tend to be associated with military leadership or how both the IRA and Protestant paramilitaries turned into drug cartels in North Ireland.
I also don't think it's a party ideological thing - PRI, PAN, and now MORENA have the same mid- and upper-level people.
Without oversight, a self-defense militia may expand beyond its original scope in unfortunate ways. The history of the Italian Mafia can be instructive here.
I'm pretty sure that a self defense militia was the standard way that people would defend their farms and livelihoods against violent outsiders for the majority of human history
That gang has international arms. They have logistics trains. They have industry analysts! Sometimes maybe they have Pay and HR issues. They're a global business with external trade agreements with elements in other countries. They lease other business services back and forth like B2B.
The only equating I did was to point out that either way you're stuck having to align with a group of people willing and ready to commit lethal violence with lethal weapons.
Use whatever words you want but I think that's clearly violent and it's clearly a gang, which by definition is "a group of persons working together" or even more specifically, "a group of persons working to unlawful or antisocial ends". In this case the newly formed gang is certainly unlawful.
I'm not sure that it's certainly unlawful to defend yourself against gang violence, but I'm not a Mexican lawyer. It's such an odd thing to say that people defending their homes are now a gang because they fight back against the cartel.
Mexico has gun laws which are significantly more restrictive than the USA. There is only one legal gun store in the country, they must all be permitted, calibers are limited, and only permitted within the place of residence. "Monopoly on violence" is an illusion that's propped up mostly by the culture of the people who live in a country.
Sweden's gun homicide rate has increased by 400% since 2010 due to nothing other than demographic change.
In the 1990s, I traveled into Tijuana from San Diego County a few times. We usually walked, because of reasons.
For people traveling north into the USA, the border checkpoint included long queues of vehicles and people alike, customs inspections, routine searches of everything, passport checks, and questions by actual Border Patrol officers.
Walking south into Mexico, there was a broad, unsupervised walkway and a one-way turnstile. Large signs read:
I guess I'd rather have the state maintain a monopoly on violence.