If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs. Setup compounds to securely house the police forces. Change the policy to "balazos, muchos balazos".
This is a naïve "Bernie bro"-style take. What do you with cartel turf wars? Legalize murder? The problem is not only complex on a local scale (city or country), but there are geopolitical pressures at play as well.
Cartels tend to be very populist, often funneling money back in their communities making them (paradoxically) better. On the other hand, you've also got offshore banks that protect cartels, laundering their money, just as they protect the likes of large tech companies stash their money in tax-free havens. If you want to change that whole machinery, be prepared to take on the world's billionaires.
The problem the cartels will face is that there is no other business that makes as much money, and it would require a retool of the entire organization (or scale up, at a minimum) to get back to even a fraction of their power.
Cartels are not some unstoppable juggernaut: they run on capital, same as every other business. No money for bribes & no money for foot soldiers == no more cartel at a recognizable scale.
This is not true. See this article[1] and HN thread[2]:
> “It’s good business,” El Polkas says with a shrug. “It makes a lot of money.” When I ask how gasoline compares to narcotics, in terms of overall revenue to Los Zetas, he rubs his index fingers together. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “It’s approximately as profitable as drugs.”
[1] - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-w...
And a quick search reveals:
>he Mexican government said fuel theft — huachicol as it is known in Spanish — decreased from about 60,000 barrels per day in 2018 to about 11,000 a day in 2019, with estimated savings of $6 billion.
> According to Pemex, fuel theft averaged about 4,440 barrels per day in 2020.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/despite-some-successes-mex...
I have no idea how good the source is, but there's just absolutely no way black market fuel sales could ever generate the same amount of revenue.
> On 2 July state-owned oil firm Pemex reported a 114 per cent year-on-year increase in illegal tapping during the first four months of 2020, during which authorities recovered 9,291,986 litres of stolen fuel with a commercial value of MXN157m (around US$7m).
10,000,000 only has a commercial value of $7m. Imagine the logistics of scaling that kind of operation.
Wait, what? You are saying there are no cartels in enterprises where the underlying good is legal? For example, oil cartels don't exist? The cartel will exist if the existance of the cartel causes it to make more money than would otherwise be the case. You should read about all the knee cappings and dirty dealings standard oil did in the U.S. When the US had mob problems, yes the mob was involved in prostitution and gambling but it was also involved in port unloading, ice delivery, meat packing, unions, and plenty of other legal goods/activities. Many of the organized crime issues the US struggled with were related to fixing elections and paying off city workers, particularly in big east coast cities like NY, Boston, and Chicago, where loyalty to the machine meant city contracts, city jobs, etc. There was fixing of construction contracts, service contracts, garbage delivery, etc. All of these goods/services were legal.
Cartels are just organized crime, and what causes an end to cartels is rule of law. As long as there is no rule of law, it will always be more profitable for someone to break into a store and take something than to obtain it legally, and it will always be more profitable to burn down a rival company's factory than to outsell the factory by lowering your price, and it will always be more profitable to seize market share with a gun than with a better product and to extract payments by offering protection to small businesses who can't rely on the police to protect them because there is no rule of law. The idea that a country without proper rule of law can get rid of organized crime by legalizing everything they do seems pretty far fetched. The Sicilian mafia existed because of a lack of rule of law, not because of drugs. It took up drugs, it took up other activities when the opportunity arose, but it far predated them. Mexico has a rule of law problem and a corruption problem, and really a weak central government problem. Fix that, and cartels can be brought under control.
Oil cartels are a different kind of cartel. They don't go around casually murdering their rivals, let alone innocent people as acceptable collateral damage.
Legalizing drugs would eliminate the risk premium, but both fentanyl and avocados are high-margin products. The problem is at least partially structural and cultural, not merely regulatory.
The banks who launder the money only get fees and no jail time because they are working under the table for the same agencies.
I think it would work absent external pressures. A drug company that can openly operate on the highways and ports, pay for its own helicopters and operate its own militia for security, and call in the police and army at need, has a significant edge over a cartel operating covertly. Unfortunately, a legitimate company would at the very least not have access to the North American market, which would stop it competing with the cartels.
The source of the violence in Mexico is drug cartels. Drug cartels take profit from the illegal drug trade. Eliminate the illegal drug trade and you will greatly reduce the funding for organized crime.
Attacking their funding is the solution. Cartels would not be popular if they did not have money. If they cannot smuggle illegal drugs they will have lots less money.
Stopping cartels requires true international effort and coordination. Unless the bankers and money launderers bear some responsibility for the murders and drug flow nothing will change. It's nearly impossible I think, given the absolutely vast sums of money and profit on the table. Life sentences are not too much for the people enabling the corruption and destruction of Mexico.