On Corruption

El Universal weighs in on a corruption conference held yesterday, attended by, among others Baltasar Garzón:

[The attendees] emphasized that corruption must be combated to defeat the mafias that penetrate the public security and justice structures. But not only condemning the corruption of the officials, politicians, and police, but also that which the society itself shelters and permits, even in their daily activities, because that is where a perverse ethic of convenience undermines the social fabric and is expanding until turning against the population in the form of mafias.

The social unity is conceived by these figures not only as coming out to the streets to protest the violence or through an anti-crime initiative from media outlets, but above all as a common effort of combating crime and fostering a culture of prevention at the level of a citizen's daily routine.

That is to say, the struggle against violence cannot be won simply by military or armed force. The labor is together with a united society and through a effort to eradicate corruption at its source, socially punishing illicit activities, not rewarding them or celebrating them.

Mexico has a lot to learn from countries that have already passed through what we are living. These visions must be taken into account because they open our horizon and they move us way from limited or partial conceptions of the phenomenon. Above all when we are before the monster of criminality, whose confrontation must be carried out with an integrated, broad, and intricate vision, equal to the phenomenon itself.