Commentary
Ten people were found murdered in
Acapulco, Mexico, on May 22. The bodies were thrown from vehicles and scattered around the city, including the tourist sector.
Acapulco used to be a glamorous vacation hotspot. After a hurricane in October 2023 and out-of-control gangland violence, the city is still hot but for the wrong reasons. Gangs in Acapulco, as in the rest of Mexico, are fighting over the “right” to extortion, drug smuggling corridors, and migrant trafficking routes. Mexico as a territory has failed and, sadly, is crumbling into competing ganglands.
Latin America hosts the worst gang violence in the world, with major problems in about half of its countries, including
Haiti,
Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Ecuador, and the Bahamas. Along with Haiti, Mexico is arguably among the worst of the bunch.
Gangs south of the border are a rising threat to market democracies, property rights, and the basic freedoms of these societies and the United States to their north. They threaten American citizens through violence and criminality that spills over the border, including through illegal immigration and drugs that kill more than 100,000 Americans yearly.
Gangland violence in Mexico has reached a peak under the leftist nationalist presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who tends to
minimize the gang problem. He adopted a policy of “hugs, not bullets” as a crime-fighting measure and has called on gang members to think of their
mothers’ feelings as a way to leave their lives of crime. Apparently, a quick criminal buck is more attractive to them than pleasing Mom. Gangland violence and illegal immigration have worsened uncontrollably under AMLO.
Another issue likely to drive such desperation is Mexico City’s declining
water supply. The city’s water system, which helps serve 22 million residents of the metropolitan area, is at just 30 percent capacity, having dropped steadily over the past two years. About 68 percent of the entire country of Mexico is in drought. Dehydrated
howler monkeys are falling dead from trees, with temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit in the state of Tabasco.
If water levels at the city’s reservoirs drop to 20 percent, they could no longer be tapped, according to officials cited by The New York Times. That might happen as soon as late June. Meanwhile, rationing is in effect, causing residents to use shower water to clean around the house.
Elections on June 2 will replace AMLO, who has “manipulated democratic institutions” to the point of “democratic backsliding,” according to
Foreign Affairs. The leading candidate to replace him,
Claudia Sheinbaum, is from AMLO’s party and has nothing but good to say about her boss. He orchestrated a new law that would allow the recall of the next president midway through her six-year term. So she must stay on his good side.
Ms. Sheinbaum has indicated that she will retain her predecessor’s foreign policy, which is notoriously anti-American,
pro-China, pro-Cuba, and pro-Venezuela. This is “bad news for democracy,” an analyst noted in the Miami Herald. And there is not much indication that she will change Mexico’s failed approach to gang violence after the election. More than two dozen
election candidates have been killed leading up to June 2, which intimidates most others.
President Felipe Calderón cracked down on gangs in 2006, as did several administrations following. But the gangland violence continues to grow, with a total of 450,000 deaths over the past 20 years. Building drug profits and the availability of abundant weaponry, approximately 80 percent smuggled in from the United States, are fueling the violence.
Mexico has tried to blame
U.S. gun manufacturers in U.S. court. The case could be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall, which would likely rule against Mexico and set a precedent against foreign countries’ using our court system in a manner that violates our Constitutional rights.
How should the United States respond to Mexico’s failure to follow democratic norms and enforce its own laws, which result in the deaths of so many Americans at the hands of drug cartels?
Increased economic sanctions and tariffs on the country are one option. Yet we continue giving the country foreign aid. Last year, the United States provided
$138 million, which some Texas lawmakers say should be cut because of Mexico’s failure to provide sufficient water to South Texas farmers, as expected under a 1944 treaty.
Another option is to target the drug cartels directly through cross-border
military force, as proposed by former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Most Americans and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley support U.S. military action against cartels in Mexico.
“We’re not going to wait. We’re not going to let any more Americans die,” Ms. Haley told Reuters in September 2023. “Either [Mexico] does it, or we do it. But one of us is doing it.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
