This is good to see. I don't usually see a lot in the press about Mexico accept for the cartel-related news. Hard to believe I forget that Mexico is more or less a normal country, not some dystopian war zone.
This summer, I'll be heading to Mexico (Monterrey) and San Antonio again, and I'm looking forward to Monterrey a lot more than San Antonio.
Mexico, apart from certain regions (like almost everywhere) is pretty great.
Where are the armed guards at gas stations in Canada? Where are the mass graves in Sweden? Where's the bribery-is-business-as-usual in England?
Don't pretend like everywhere has these kinds of problems. It really undercuts the valid point you have that there's a lot of great places in Mexico and it's generally populated by good people.
My read of Waterluvian's comment is that:
1. "Problems" (e.g., violence) quantifiably differ in magnitude between Mexico and other places. And,
2. Those differences matter. That is, the dismissal in the form of "well, everywhere has problems" is disingenuous.
To illustrate that, he provided three specific salient examples (armed guards at gas stations, mass graves, and rampant corruption).
My read of your response to that comment was that you dismissed the idea that armed guards, mass graces, and rampant corruption are a level beyond the violence in e.g., Canada and Sweden, because "what about aboriginals?" By dismissing Waterluvian's comment, you made a statement normalizing Mexico's level of violence.
So I tried to clarify that the difference in level of violence matters, and, here we are.
> i didnt say anything about mexico.
Sure you did. Denying "A != B" says something about A.
> im replying to someone who says there arent parts of canada or sweden comparable to mexico.
That's not what the comment you responded to said. Violence and corruption is quantifiably endemic to Mexico. Small populations in Canada and Sweden see outsized violence, but on the whole, those countries experience less violence.
To put some real numbers on it, there were 611 homicides in Canada in 2016, across a population of 36.26 million. That's 1.68 per 100,000 people. The homicide rate in Canada peaked at 3.03 per 100,000 in 1975.
In contrast, the homicide rate in the US peaked at 10.1 per 100k in 1974 and now hovers around 4.5 per 100k.
Mexico's homicide rate in 2016 was 19.3 per 100k. And "as of 2014, Mexico has the 16th highest rate of homicides committed against women in the world."[0]
If you're trying to illustrate that Canada is just as violent as Mexico, you picked a poor example.
[0]: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/CDDandC...
what im trying to get at is that we discuss the violence (valid a concern as it is) to the detriment of appreciating the rest -- that, generally, most mexican citizens are fairly typical cf. a canadian or swede in terms of their own morals and desires of life, but when we see an advancement such as the subject of this thread it is approached with an intrinsic skepticism.
does that make some kinda sense? its hard to say more on a mobile device :p
> if instead youre only saying mexico is more violent in terms of per capita homicide, well that is trivially true so not subject to debate.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying :-). Per capita homicide, corruption, arming of the regular police; on all of these metrics Mexico stands out compared to affluent NATO countries. I thought that was kind of what this comment thread was debating; I misunderstood. Mea culpa. It can be hard to communicate clearly on the internet, especially on mobile. I appreciate you taking the time to help me understand your thoughts.
I live in a pretty safe country (Belgium), but there are parts of Brussels I would not like to walk at night.
It does not have to be as extreme as mass graves. But murders, robery, drugs, and other crimes occur in the countries you named as well.
(That said, I do consider them safe countries)
If I may ask, what brings you here?
However, with incidents like cartel kidnapping and murdering 40+ students, including flaying them alive, and almost half of the individuals arrested in connection to the crime are police[0], it's not exactly the kind of incident where any rate of occurrence besides 0 is acceptable. I'd rather know that things like this happen in a specific region than not know. Anything else is reckless ignorance.
0. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cartel-mem...
I know it's the fashion to Blame America First in all things, but Mexico has enormous problems well beyond its border with the US.
Not saying the USA is responsible for solving Mexico's problems, but we do have a lot of national soul-searching to do if we want to get serious about drug violence in both countries.
So goes the conventional group think. Thing is Mexico isn't the only nation that shares a long border with the US. Yet somehow Canada isn't yet another murder capital of the world, busily feeding the relentless US appetite for drugs.
But analyzing the difference between Mexico and Canada isn't something you're allow to do; it rapidly produces extremely uncomfortable results that contemporary good-thinkers don't ever dare entertain.
But thats not what they said. They said a small area within Mexico is like a warzone.
And then you wrote about several small areas, of which you highlighted incidents over the last decade, so I guess nothing is even happening in those areas now?
Interesting way to agree with someone. Handful of knowledge, weird flex but ok.
The thrust of the comment you replied to was that in fact, violence was not constrained to the US border.
I think you failed to read tamalesfan's comment accurately (much less charitably). The snarky comment looks especially foolish when you're so off-base.
Different way of reading it
As far as the war zone aspect -- I lived near Guadalajara in a small town called Chapala and, when you're in Guadalajara, it often does seem like a war zone. In our "peaceful" enclave, there were frequent (several times per year) shootouts with police and gang-on-gang violence along with innocent people being victimized, robbed or killed. Just a few days ago, a 78 year old Canadian expat was walking through San Antonio Tlayacapan (a nice community next to lake Chapala) and was shot in the head twice in broad daylight on the street.[0] Chapala is pretty much a peaceful retirement community, yet even there, there is brutal violence.
With the Jalisco NG Cartel, there is a substantial military and paramilitary presence across various areas of Guadalajara. Large police pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the bed isn't something I've ever seen -- outside of an actual war zone. I've been in US Army units that have been less heavily armed than some of the standard police in Guadalajara. Heavily armed patrols in full military "battle-rattle" are a mainstay of the city. Anyone that's suggesting that Mexico is a peaceful place must be asleep. The Mexican people are generally very peaceful and I typically feel safe enough there, but that's not much different than how friendly Afghanis are -- despite Taliban activity in the neighborhood. You're definitely taking much different precautions traveling through Mexico than you would traveling through Los Angeles.
I love Mexico, my wife is from there, I go there all the time -- but suggesting it's a war zone? That's not too far from the truth -- the Mexican marines recently took over security in Acapulco.[4] If that isn't the definition of "war zone," I'm not sure that word has any meaning. You'd have to be oblivious not to see the war zone aspects in many parts of the country.
[1] https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/canadian-expat-78-shot-and-... [2] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6024568/cancun-murders-mexico-... [3] https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/michoacan-turf-war-fuels-cr... [4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/26/marines-swoop-ac...