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?