Overstatement

Via the Mexico Law Blog, I see that Forbes has a wide-ranging cover story titled "Mexican Meltdown." I'm assuming the authors didn't choose the title, but it's an enormously pessimistic article. A lengthy exploration of the potentially combustible mix of rising crime and a declining economy is a good idea, and the article has lots of interesting comments and worrying statistics, but they make Mexico sound a step away from a civil war.

The pessimism clearly got under the skin Arturo Sarukhan in the following exchange:

Forbes.com: Some intelligence analysts say that the unbridled violence and government corruption in Mexico indicate the nation has become a failed state. What's your take?

Sarukhan: Failed state? That is a very irresponsible remark. This is one pig that I can't put lipstick on. The challenge of corruption is being taken on. We are rooting out people who have been infiltrated. Look at the role of the Mexican private sector and civil society. Nowhere can you see signs of anything akin to a failed state.

Aside from the absence of any support whatsoever for the "irresponsible remark," what do they expect the Mexican ambassador to say? "Yes, indeed we are a failed state. I've not been paid a salary in six months."

I don't have any factual quibbles with the article, but the thrust is wrong. The fact that Mexico's banks are, relatively speaking, in great shape warrants a pair of sentences, while every other negative nugget is treated as though the Zapatistas had once again taken over Chiapas. The pieces of good news (new investments, arrests of cartel bosses) are included only to be shot down a paragraph later. The authors make valuable points about the cartels' potential threat to the United States (and they might have cited the DEA's findings several months ago that the cartels operate in close to 200 American cities, which was a cover story in Proceso), but they jump about six bridges too far with the failed state bit. It comes across like a bunch of cherry-picked data by people who willfully exaggerating the situation. I mean, you could write a sensationalist article that made the US look like a failed state ("Financial collapse, the danger of economic depression, the target of terrorists, bogged down in two wars, disrespected by the world, crime rising at home...is the United States no longer united?"), but that wouldn't make it true.

The last couple of years in Mexico has exposed a mountain of problems (on top of which the financial crisis has heaped even more), but it has also revealed a lot of strengths and witnessed a great many successes. The article inclines way too much toward the negative, and makes Mexico seem on an irreversible slide downward. Despite the decline of Cantarell, despite the massive firings in the maquiladoras, despite the waves of crime, I find their argument unconvincing.