Creel Blames the PRI

Santiago Creel pointed out that Mexico's violence is concentrated in a handful of states, all of them governed by the PRI for most or all of their recent history: Durango, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, and Coahuila. I'd never thought about it quite like that, but that's certainly true. However, we should be careful about attributing too much responsibility to the PRI governors for the upticks in violence. The primary people responsible in Juárez are Chapo Guzmán, Vicente Carrillo, and the thousands of gang members working for them. Likewise in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León--the governors of those two states didn't have a lot to do with the Zetas and the Gulf traffickers going to war. Also, if you do want to blame the government first, the point about the governors should be coupled with the realization that panistas have walked Los Pinos for ten years, and research suggests that voting for PAN mayors leads to higher number of executions.