Expert Commentary on Mexico

Mexican crime expert Edgardo Buscaglia argues that Mexico must suffer more violence in order to break up the criminal rings that dominate the news. The alternative scenario would be a wholesale state capture by criminal groups, which would lead to a decline in violence but a more firmly entrenched band of criminals.

Despite everything that has happened, Mexico still must suffer through the scary violence that occurred in Russia or in Colombia in the '90s, when bombs were exploding everywhere in the cities, when planes were falling from the sky or more accurately they were blown from it, when ministers were assassinated by the score...

"When society and above all the elite feel under siege is when things begin to change"...

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the interview, but the idea that Mexico has to suffer through X amount of violence, that it can only begin to cleanse itself when it has gone through a Colombia-in-the-1990s sort of trauma is mistaken. Think of two addicts. Both can't get better until they hit bottom, but one's bottom might be showing up high to his parents' anniversary party, while the other's might be sleeping with his sister-in-law, driving his car into a river, and firing a gun at police. It doesn't strike me as logical that Mexico's bottom will be the same as Colombia's or Russia's. Given the former's greater political instability over the course of the twentieth century and the latter's political revolution (of a sort) in the 1990s, it would be pretty surprising if stable-by-comparison Mexican sank to the depths of Colombia and Russia in their worst moments. Mexico's security policy should in part be dictated by a desire to avoid the fate of Russia and Colombia, not the understanding that such a descent is necessary and inevitable.

I do agree wholeheartedly with the idea that a durable security strategy that transcends political party and level of government, sort of like containment for modern Mexico, would be of huge benefit for Mexico. The mania for overhauling institutions means that Mexico often takes two steps back to take three forward in a future that never arrives. The national security pact from 2008 was a real lost opportunity in this regard, something I wrote about here and here.